Six lectures on painting delivered to the students of the Royal academy of arts in London, January, 1904

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1

REESE LIBRARY

I UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

Class

«-K-a»nMn«Ft«cw^

\

SIX LECTURES ON PAINTING

SIX LECTURES ON PAINTING

SIX LECTURES ON
PAINTING

DELIVERED TO THE STUDENTS OF

THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS

IN LONDON, JANUARY 1904

BY

GEORGE CLAUSEN

A.RA., R.W.S.

rROPESSOR OP PAINTING IN THB ROYAL ACADEMY

WITH NINETEEN ILLVSTHATIONS

THIRD EDITION

METHUEN & CO.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

^

OriginaUy published by Mr, ElUci

Stoek A^rU 1904

Stc9Md Edition Se^titubtr iqH

First Published by Mttktun ^ C#.,

Third EditioH igo6

CONTENTS

PAGB

1. Introductory— Some Early Painters . i

II. On Lighting and Arrangement . . 23

III. On Colour . . . . . 45

IV. Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt . 67

V.^ On LANDStAPE AND OPEN-AIR PAINTING 89

VI. On Realism and Impressionism . . 113

202366

REESE LIBRARY

i UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

Class

s

SIX LECTURES ON PAINTING

Lectures on Painting

I think we may consider that extraordinary
genius, William Blake, who was once a student of
these schools, to be the real forerunner of the
Pre-Raphaelite movement. Writing in 1809, he
draws attention to the clearness and beauty of
the early Italian pictures, praising their precision
and hardness, which he contrasts with the art of
Rubens, Titian, and Rembrandt, whom he calls
smudgers, blunderers, and daubers.

At about the same time, too, as the Pre-
Raphaelite movement came the invention of
photography, which has, I think, exercised a dis-
turbing influence on our art ; and a little later the
art of the Japanese became known among us.
So many theories are in the air to-day, so many
courses are open to us, that it is more than ever
difficult for the student to find his way ; and
though, knowing my own shortcomings, I feel
strongly my inadequacy, I will do my best to
give you such help as, were I a student in your
place, I should wish to receive.

I imagine the intention of the Royal Academy
in establishing this Chair was to supplement the
teaching of the schools — the life class, which is a

Introductory — Some Early Painters 5

training of the hand and eye, the tools of the
artist, so to speak — with some direction of the
mind also, so that the student should be not only
equipped with sound technical skill, but be put
on the track of some direction, or at least given
indications, which would help him to decide
how he should apply his skill when he goes
out into the world. For the artist's educa-
tion does not finish in the life class ; it begins
there.

• In the old days, when there was the constant
relation of pupil to master, theory and practice
went hand in hand. The training was thorough,
the best obtainable, but limited. An artist
knew at most what a few others were doing
round about him, and was, as a rule, content to .
develop himself on the lines of the traditions
and with the instruction he had received. And
so arose the ** schools " of one place and another.
But to-day we are at once worse off and better.
We have lost all tradition — almost the tradition
of fine workmanship. With the exception of
the Pre-Raphaelite painters, no moderns have
attained the wonderful, almost miraculous, per-

Lectures on Painting

fection and delicacy of execution which we find
in the best old paintings — not achieved once or
twice only, but steadily and consistently for a
long period. But we are better off in that we
have before us, brought into the open light of
discussion and criticism, the whole practice of
painting, for our admiration and guidance —
and confusion ; for our wider knowledge has
brought uncertainty, and every man is a law
unto himself. We are also under the disad-
vantage^— if it is a disadvantage— of there being
practically no direct commands for pictures,
such as the Church or the great patron furnished
in former days, which allowed the artist full liberty
of expression under the restraint of a given idea.
We have long been without this ; in fact, the
varied developments of painting in the last
century are owing to the freedom which artists
enjoy, or I might say to the necessity which every
artist feels himself under, to express his own
feeling ; and this accounts for the somewhat
chaotic and confused impression which our big
exhibitions produce, as a whole, in spite of so
much excellent work.

Introductory — Some Early Painters 7

Portraiture, which is vigorous and flourishing,
and wall decoration, in which, thanks to the
initiative of the late Lord Leighton, some essays
are being made, are the only branches of our art
that rest on the simple basis of direct demands.
It is to be hoped that those who have the power
will do all that is possible in the direction of
encouraging fine decorative painting ; for the
conditions of decorative work are such as neces-
sarily to develop the best faculties of the artist
and the finest qualities of painting.

But I don't want to paint my picture too black,
or to imply that our painting is in decadence, for
I think it is advancing ; and although we live
in times when everything is in the melting-pot,
including the Fine Arts, we know that the instinct
for beauty, and for its expression in the Fine Arts,
is as natural and as necessary to our being as any
other of our instincts, and that the cry of deca-
dence is as old as the world itself. There is a
comforting little story told by Lanzi in his book
on Italian painting, of Orcs^a the Florentine
artist, who was living somewhere about 1320, at
the very beginning of Florentine art. He gives

8 Lectures on Painting

it on the authority of a contemporary writer,
Sacchetti, that one day Orcagna proposed as a
question, Who was the greatest master, setting
Giotto out of the question ? Some answered
Cimabue, some Stephano, some Bernardo, and
some Buffalmacco. Taddeo Gaddi, who was in
the company, said : " Truly these were very able
painters, but the art is deca3dng every day."
And I think that Michelangelo said that in his
time the arts were not much considered. So we
may conclude that the relation of the artist to the
world in general was always much the same as it
is now. As in other departments of human
activity, painters have done well or ill, as it has
been given them to do ; succeeding generations
of artists have cherished their memories, or have
forgotten them, according to the estimation in
which they held their work.

And so, when we find ourselves in the presence
of great works of the past — ^in the presence, one
might say, of the thought of great men made
visible to us, it is well that we should put aside, as
far as we can, our own preoccupations and theories,
and try and read their thought, and see how far

Introductory — Some Early Painters 9

we can gain from them confirmation, strength,
and support for ourselves.

For one result of the wider appreciation of the
older men is that our own work is brought sharply
up against them ; and when we find that a work
of our own time may lose its freshness and interest
in a few years, while the older WQ<^ks still hold us
with an increasing charm, mus/we not see that
we may have something to unlearn as well as to
learn ? There is no doubt that greater knowledge
only serves to confirm and to extend our admira*
tion for the work of the past, and this must lead
every thoughtful student to question much that
is practised to-day. We should try to reach some
firm groxmd, some fixed principles that we can
hold in common with the old painters.

I wish to direct your attention to-day to some
of the Early Italian painters, but I do not propose
to take you systematically through the history of
any of the different schools. Some knowledge of
the kind is very necessary, and no doubt in early
days it was the duty of the painting professor to
give this instruction. But we must remember
that in those days commimication between

lO Lectures on Painting

nations was difficult. There were no national
collections, and there was little or no literature on
artistic subjects generally available ; while to-day
we have readily accessible to us, not only — thanks
to the Royal Academy — our Old Masters Exhibi-
tions, but an enormous and admirable body of
literature, covering the whole field of painting,
which, as I have reminded you, is now very fully
explored. Indeed, I almost think that too much
attention is given nowadays to the minutiae of
criticism ; but still, we should be very grateful to
those writers whose learning and patient enthu-
siasm are devoted to the service of our art, who
have done so well a necessary work, which
practising painters could never be expected to do.
It is a hopeful sign of the interest taken in the
Fine Arts to-day that it is not only possible, but
profitable, to produce such works, and I earnestly
recommend you to make as much use of them as
you can.

But I should advise you not to go to work
systematically, and to take it as a task ; not to
grind through the different schools, and then thank
goodness youVe done with it ; not to puzzle your-

Introductory — Some Early Painters ii

selves too much in trying to reconcile contradic-
tory excellences, for things will make themselves
clear to you as you go on. I should recommend
you to go through a picture-gallery as one seeking
the face of a friend in a crowd, and to let your-
selves be led on by your S3mipathies. If you
admire the work of a man, find out all you can
about him ; see his work as much as you can,
especially his beginnings, — always look out for
beginnings, — and try to get at his drawings and
studies, which you can readily see either in
photographs in your library, or in the Print
Room at the British Museum, where there is a
magnificent collection of original drawings. So
I must leave the detailed study of the Old Masters
to your own goodwill.

But there are problems in painting — the main
points of pictures — ^which appeal only or mainly
to artists, and on this ground I hope that my
remarks may be of some service to you.

Painting, as we know it, may be said to begin
with the Early Italians, for but little remains of
the painting of the ancients, and we have no
example of their finest work, though we may

12 Lectures on Painting

infer, from the merit of such works as the Graeco-
Egyptian mmnmy-portraits of the second century
A.D. — ordinary journeyman painters* work, no
doubt, and of no pretension — that the ancients
were as great in their painting as in their sculpture.
There are several of these portraits in the National
Gallery. But, for us, the Italian Primitives are
the starting-point. We do not perhaps realise
how great were the earliest men of aU — Giotto and
the other inventors, the men who took the first
steps forward, who discovered perspective and
foreshortening, realising not only length and
breadth, but depth in their pictures, and giving
nature in its three dimensions — the men who first
expressed form by the use of shadow. Although
these things are commonplaces to us, we can still
learn much from the study of the early men ; but
I do not propose now to do more than touch on
the work of two early painters — ^not of the earliest
time, but still of the beginning — Fra Angelico
and Masaccio, an idealist and a realist. They
both lived in Florence (Angelico from 1387 to
1455, Masaccio from 1401 to 1446), and rank
among the great artists of the world.

Introductory — Some Early Painters 13

Angelico painted in Florence, in Orvieto, and
in Rome. There are a number of his frescoes in
the monastery of St. Mark, in Florence, little
pictures on the walls of the cells and passages.
They are remarkable, apart from the directness
and simplicity of their execution, for their deep
religious feeling. It seems as if Angelico must
have had a distinct vision of the scene he was
painting in his mind, for his paintings convey to
us the feeling or sentiment of his subject more
strongly than anything else. We are not con-
cerned with the people of his pictures as indi-
viduals, nor with their dresses, or the general
setting of the scene, except so far as it serves to
express the subject. And it is, I think, because
of his preoccupation with the subject that his
execution is so straightforward and expressive.
There is no cleverness, but he does just what
he wishes to do, with beautiful and expressive
drawing and very simple, clear colour. The
sentiment of his landscape is, like that of all the
early painters, very serene ; like the clear light
before simrise in summer.

There is no trace of posing in his figures ; they

14 Lectures on Painting

have an unstudied grace, and there is even in
their movements something of the little awkward-
nesses that we notice in the movements of children.
And, though they are very human and touching,
there is something about them different from
ordinary people — something remote and apart
from the world. They seem to exist for the
picture only, and to have had no past history, no
experience of life.

His pictures affect one as do things seen in a
dream, and we accept his visions without ques-
tioning details which, if they were not somehow
wrapped in his sentiment, would make us smile
at their childishness. The little arcade under
which the Virgin sits, in the picture of the Annun-
ciation (one of the most beautiful of his works),
is so low that she could hardly stand upright in
it ; but it does not matter, nor do the little toy
trees and towns and towers that we find in his
pictures. They are symbols only, and we do not
question their details ; nor are we conscious, in
Angelico*s work, of the model as an individual.

But in the work of Masaccio we are conscious
of the individual models throughout, and of the

Masaccio Church of the Carmine, Florence

THE EXPULSION FROM PARADISE

Introductory — Some Early Painters 15

interest of portraiture. He was one of the first,
if not the first, to get beyond the early conven-
tions of drawing and of light and shade, and to
understand drawing in the sense in which it is
imderstood to-day. We can see this in his
frescoes in the Church of the Carmine, in Florence.
The figures of Adam and Eve, for example, are
drawn with an accuracy and truth to nature — to
the nature of his models — ^which is convincing.
And there is a portrait of an old man by him, in
the Uffizi, drawn with the most absolute assur-
ance and accomplishment. The modelling is so
close and true that a sculptor could model a bust
from it. This portrait is, like the paintings in
the chapel, executed in fresco ; and, as we know,
this means that the work must be done rapidly,
and with certainty, as no alterations are possible.
It seems to me that these works of Masaccio are
as well done as they could possibly be.

These frescoes of his in the church were felt to
be so far in advance of anything till then done,
that they became the school and pattern for all
the young Florentine artists, and Masaccio's
chapel is one of the stairting-points of the Renais-^

1 6 Lectures on Painting

sance. Raphael and Michelangelo both studied
there^ and one may trace there the origin of the
composition of some of RaphaePs cartoons, and
even some of his figures, as the St. Paul, are taken
bodily from these frescoes. Masaccio's work
shows interest in expression of form and character
rather than in sentiment. One can imagine that
one kind of subject would come as readily to him
as another, but one cannot imagine Angelico
painting anything but his own visions.

What is the charm of the early artist's work —
a charm which fuller knowledge only strengthens
— in those who have once felt it ? It is, I think,
partly owing to the impression which these
pictures give us of a simpler state of life. We
see good, honest, simple souls taking part, without
excitement or surprise, in miraculous events.
We fed with perhaps a little toucli of envy that
man was a little nearer to the angels than he is
to-day; it is very doubtful if he actually was,
but that is the impression. Then there is their
great charm as paintings : their wonderful sim-
plicity, and untroubled ease of execution. We
never can admire too much the delicate, clear

Introductory — Some Early Painters 17

lighting, and it is doubtful if in any later work,
with all our added knowledge, the sense of tranquil
daylight — ^not the illusion of daylight — ^is given
as well as in these early works. There are no
cast shadows — ^when painters began to see
shadows their troubles began — to take our atten-
tion from the sensitive, firm, and expressive lines
of their drawing. How beautiful is their broad,
simple modelling, and their masses of fine colour
and beautiful plain spaces, enhancing little pas-
sages of extreme richness ! One can go again
and again to them with increasing wonder and
delight. And when we come to the later genera-
tion— to the painters who were living just before
the year 1500— we reach a period that to me is
the most interesting and beautiful of Italian
painting, although its highest development was
yet to come. But think of the men then work-
ing I Da Vinci, Botticelli, Pollajuolo, Piero di
Cosimo, Pinturicchio, Signorelli, Mantegna,
Bellini, Crivelli, and a host of others.

The technical perfection of the early work is
one of its great beauties. Much of it was in
fresco, which from its conditions requires — to

1 8 Lectures on Painting

take one quality alone — ^very fine draughtsman-
ship. And in tempera painting, which was em-
ployed for panels and small work, the same
preliminary planning as in fresco had to be gone
through, although it was, I believe, possible — I
have had no practical experience of tempera
painting — to work more than once over the same
surface. But, as a rule, and as we can see by
studjang these works, the colour was put on
sweetly and quickly, and the draperies were
painted, often with one plain tint of colour over
a preparatory monochrome, and this accounts for
the beautiful quality of the paint ; for we know
that when the colour is put down clearly and
untouched, it is fresh and untroubled.

Until the time of Masaccio, no attempt was
made to gain richness or relief by the opposition
of light to dark. All was in an even light,
and richness was obtained by the local colours
of draperies, ground, sky, etc. It is a style of
painting admirably suited to the decoration of
buildings, because of its clearness and formality.

But I think that the older painters' ideal was
always the representation of nature — even, if

Masaccio

Uffizi Gallety

PORTRAIT OF AN OLD MAN

Introductory — Some Early Painters 19

possible, to the point of imitation or illusion ;
and we know that the invention of oil-painting
was welc(»ned as giving, in this direction, a
greater range to the artist. And yet one may
fed that the unconscious and naive representa-
tion of nature by the older men was better
— ^in that it was truer to the spirit of nature
— ^than the self-conscious imitative work of later
times. /

I should like to touch on the question of the \J
picture as a decoration ; in our times a distinc-
tion is made between painting which is decora-
tive and painting which is pictorial, which is, I
think, an unfortunate distinction, and one which
should not exist : for all pictures should decorate
the walls or places on which they are placed.
That this distinction should exist is perhaps our
own fault, in forgetting, as we do sometimes, that .
a picture should be agreeable to the eye in its \
colours and masses ; the good old painters never \
forgot that. And a picture that has <mly clever-
ness of execution, or interest of anecdote, will
soon cease to charm; while a picture may be
feeble, and even childish, in its executicm, yet

20 Lectures on Painting

if its masses and colours are well arranged, it
will always give pleasure to the eye.

But I do not think it is possible to draw the
line, and say at what point of imitation or of
realism a picture ceases to be decorative and
becomes pictorial ; for when a picture was painted
on a wall, it was intended to bring the scene
into the presence, if possible, of the spectators
in the room.

In the House of Livia, among the ruins on the
Palatine Hill, are some rooms with the painted
decorations still on the walls. One room is
painted with architectural openings in the walls,
through which we see landscapes and figures,
the intention being to give the idea of space
outside.

And there are many other instances to be seen,
especially in Italian churches, where we find
paintings in which the real architectural features
of the building are imitated in paint, and con-
tinued into the picture, to make a scene for it,
as in the small refectory of the monastery of
St. Mark in Florence. This is a vaulted room.
At one end is a painting of the Last Supper,

Introductory — Some Early Painters 21

by Ghirlandajo. A bay of the vaulting is con-
tinued in perspective into the painting, and the
colour of the vaulting is matched, so as to sug-
gest that the scene passes in our presence. The
same device is employed by Leonardo in his
Last Supper. And the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel is planned in this, way. Michelangelo
has joined painted mouldings to real ones, — one
cannot tell where, — and has built up in paint
from them a great structural framework into the
ceiling, and on this he has placed his figures.

And we see the same plan carried on until, in
later times, it falls into the worst possible taste,
as in those decorations where a ceiling will be
covered with painted flying figures, with the leg
of the nearest one actually modelled in relief,
and projecting over the enclosing moulding !
And the lamentable part of it is that it is very
skilfully done.

We can, I think, draw a little generalisation
from this. It seems as if in the artist's mind
the desire to express his subject and the desire
to display his skill are conflicting tendencies.
When these are in perfect balance we get the

22 Lectures on Painting

finest work. When the desire for expression is
the stronger, we get sincere and beautiful, but
imperfect and inunature work, as in the case of
the early Primitives. But when the desire for
the display of skill is the stronger, we get clever-
ness, affectation, and decadence.

II

ON LIGHTING AND ARRANGEMENT

u

II

ON LIGHTING AND ARRANGEMENT

THE difficulties encountered in painting a
picture lie, not so much in the actual
painting of each portion of the work
(though this is full of difficulties) as in the
roTitrnI of thft ^^nlft ^anvflc;. in determining what
part of the picture is to be given prominence,
and in what way this is to be attained.

To draw a figure, to paint a head, a piece of
drapery, a sky, a tree — this we can all do to
some extent if we have the actual object before
us ; but as it is not in the nature of things that
a group or a scene— even if we are so fortunate
as to see it once so arranged as to make us
wish to paint it— can be reconstituted every
time we get to work on our picture, we must
learn to retain its main points, or get some
general design — ^some image in our minds of

25

26 Lectures on Painting

what we want to accomplish, before we begin
our work.

The wonderful range which is possible, and
which has been attained in painting, has been
attained by the study and analysis, not only of
nature, but of the way in which things are shown
to us in nature by light and shade, by warm
and cold colour. These are the simple elements
of every picture (drawing, of course, included).
It is the appearance of nature that has to be
observed and analysed, the object being to
present or suggest an illusion. The painter
studies, not facts, but appearances, being helped
in the direction of his vision by the works of
those who have gone before him.

As I have already pointed out, the aim of
the early artists was to imitate nature ; and
although they had not then learned to give by
light and shade the illusion of nature, their fine
taste led them to produce great work by other
means. They were — the best of them — very true
to nature in drawing, in strong characterisation,
and very expressive in sentiment. Their decora-
tive sense and imagination were not held in re-

On Lighting and Arrangement 27

straint by the necessity of being literally true
throughout, and their works, though in them the
actual force of lighting in nature was not attained,
often not even attempted, yet have, in other
ways, a beauty and charm as great as any later
works possess.

We will follow a little the development of paint-
ing towards realism. This is, of course, only a
partial view, but there is some interest in following
it. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), in his treatise
on painting, sa5rs that " the first object of a painter
is to make a simple, flat surface appear like a
relievo, and some of its parts detached from the
ground. He who excels all others in that part of
the art deserves the greatest praise. This perfec-
tion of the art depends on the correct distribution
of lights and shades. If the painter, then, avoids
shadows, he may be said to avoid the glory of the
art, and to render his work despicable to real con-
noisseurs, for the sake of acquiring the esteem
of vulgar and ignorant admirers of fine colours,
who never have any knowledge of relievo." I
think Leonardo was a lijttle too hard on the Primi-
tives ; he does not seem to appreciate their

28 Lectures on Painting

beauty. He was the first to record, if not the
first to practise, the study of light and shadow as
we imderstand it now. For we see also in the work
of a contemporary, Melozzo da Forli (1438-1494)
the study of light and shade in nature ; there are
two of his pictures in the National Gallery —
" Music " and " Rhetoric." Those of you who do
not know Leonardo's treatise on painting would
do well to read it. It is full of wisdom and fresh
observation. His clear intelligence raises pro-
blems, many of which painters still discuss. I
will read a few extracts. He says on " gradation ":
" What is fine is not always beautiful or good. I
address this to such painters as are so attached
to the beauty of colours that they regret being
obUged to give them almost imperceptible
shadows, not considering the beautiful relief
which figures acquire by a proper gradation and
strength of shadow." Again : " Do not make the
boundaries of your figures of any other colour
than that of the background on which they are
placed ; that is, avoid making dark outlines.
The boundaries which separate one body from
another are of the nature of mathematical lines.

On Lighting and Arrangement 29

not of real lines. The end of any colour is only
the beginning of another ; and it ought not to be
called a line, for nothing interposes between them
except the termination of the one against the
other, which, being nothing in itself, cannot be
perceivable." Again : " Those shadows which in
nature are undetermined, and the extremities of
which are hardly to be perceived, are to be copied
in your painting in the same manner, never to be
precisely finished, but left confused or blended.
This apparent neglect will show great judgment,
and will be the ingenious result of your observa-
tion of nature.'* Again he says : " It is a great
error in some painters who draw a figure at home
by any particidar light, and afterwards make use
of that drawing in a picture representing an open
country, which receives the general light of the
sky, where the surrounding air gives light on all
sides. This painter would put dark shadows
where nature would put none at all, or, if any,
so faint as to be almost imperceptible ; or he
would throw reflected lights where it is impossible
there should be any.'*
He recommends the painter to compare his

30 Lectures on Painting

own work with nature in a small mirror, " which,"
says he, " being your master, will show you the
lights and shadows of any object whatever."
And, indeed, all through the book we get constant
reference to nature. *' If you do not rest on the
good foundation of nature, you will labour with
little honour and less profit." " Whoever flatters
himself that his memory can retain all the effects
of nature is deceived, for our memory is not so
capricious. Therefore, consult nature for every-
thing."

These words were written four hundred years
ago ; they might have been written to-day. One
feels how very modem he was in spirit. It is, of
course, a question what he means by " nature "
— ^whether that ideal which Sir Joshua Re3molds
called the general idea of nature, or nature in its
variety and imperfection as we see it. I think
Leonardo meant the latter, in the sense that the
persons in a picture should look what they profess
to be — not, of course, in the sense that he would
take the first woman he met as model for a
Madonna. There, where he had to represent the
highest type of woman, he chose the most beauti-

On Lighting and Arrangement 31

ful person he could, as we see in " The Virgin of
the Rocks " in the National Gallery.

There is a passage of his on lighting that seems
to bear on this picture : " The light admitted in
front of heads situated opposite side-walls which
are dark will cause them to have great relievo,
particularly if the light be placed high. And the
reason is that the most prominent parts of these
faces are illmnined by the general light striking
them in front, which light produces very faint
shadows on the part where it strikes ; but as it
turns toward the sides it begins to participate of
the dark shadows of the room, which grow darker
in proportion as it sinks with them.

" Besides, when the light comes from on high,
it does not strike on every part of the face alike,
but one part produces great shadows on another,
as the eyebrows, which deprive the whole sockets
of the eyes of light. The nose keeps it off from
a great part of the mouth, and the chin from the
neck, and such other parts. This, by concen-
trating the light upon the most projecting parts,
produces a very great relief."

I have given these passages from Leonardo to

32 Lectures on Painting

show that we are justified by tradition and good
precedent in examining nature as closely as we
can.

The effect of light colours in a picture is the
same as that of actual light in nature — to attract
the eye. Therefore painters have naturally
always striven to give that object to which they
wish first to direct attention the greatest light.
There is an old precept that there should never
be two principal lights in a picture. It means
that the spectator's attention should not be
distracted.

Now, if a scene is represented as taking place
in a room, it is possible, by arrangement of objects,
to bring the principal things into prominence
naturally and with most beautiful effect, as in the
" Maids of Honour," by Velasquez. I am sorry
to say I have not had the privilege of seeing this
picture, but only the sketch, which was in the
Old Masters Exhibition a year or two ago ; but
the picture is, I should think, the greatest achieve-
ment in painting of true ordinary lighting in the
world. There is no doubt that the effect in this
picture is exactly as in the room ; everything is

COROT

(diagram for lecture ii)

VELASQUEZ
(diagram for lecture ii)

On Lighting and Arrangement 33

accounted for naturally. It is worth remarking
how the picture is arranged— divided diagonally
into light and dark, with a strong dark on the
light side, and a little light taken into the dark.
This is a very effective arrangement, and a very
natural one. Pictures arrange themselves that
way unconsciously, or perhaps the eye finds
something agreeable in this arrangement — ^in its
interchange. It is common in landscape, as in
the picture by Corot in the Louvre ; and Whistler's
portraits of his mother, and of Carlyle, are
arranged in the same kind of pattern.

In connection with the arrangement of a picture,
it is worth while inquiring why it is that principal
masses or objects, although they should be placed
near the centre of the picture, should not be placed
exactly in the centre, or why any absolutely
symmetrical arrangements are unpleasant to the
eye, and should be avoided. I think it may be
a purely physical reason, connected with the
fatigue experienced by the eye in looking at
regular forms and spaces, and that this may also
account for the fact that such things as the true
surfaces of machinery, and the straight lines or
3

34 Lectures on Painting

monotonous regularity of buildings, fail to charm
the eye ; while unexpected variety of form does,
as we see in old buildings, ruins, mountains, and
generally in all that is called picturesque.

If a scene is represented as being in the open
air, the difficulty arises that the light of the sky,
being so great, will dominate everything, and,
instead of the figure being the principal, the land-
scape interest will predominate, and the figure
take the second place. It is not, however, always
so. There are effects of light, such as when one
is looking with the light at figures facing the sun
—especially in evening light, or when there is a
cloud behind them — ^when the figure receives
most light, and tells beautifully. I think Titian
studied and used this effect a great deal, and his
picture " The Entombment,'* in the Louvre, gives
very finely the impression of that effect.

" The Surrender of Breda," by Velasquez, is also
arranged looking with the sunlight, and the group
is built up and united by shadows from the
figures, and from clouds on the figures in middle
distance. The shadows tie the picture together.

It is possible to avoid the difficulty of the sky

On Lighting and Arrangement 35

by leaving it out, or by using a high horizon and
showing very little ; and when this is done, figures
can be painted up to the strength and the lightness
of nature, as in Bastien Lepage^s picture of " L^s
Foins" in the Luxembourg* But if much sky
were added to this, the brightest light we could
use would only look like paper, because the rela-
tive intensity of the light on figures and on sky
would not be correct. It could be " managed " —
if the middle and distance were painted dark, as
in shadow — to have a larger sky ; and the sky is
so beautiful, and can be made to convey so much,
that a picture gains if it can be used. And this
compromise was used largely by the great Vene-
tian painters, simply, I feel sure, through knowing
well what effects are possible in nature.

For you will find, if you are in the habit of con-
stantly observing nature, and on looking on all
things as if they were or might be pictures, that
such arrangements and variety of lighting of
figures as one sees in Velasquez, in Rembrandt,
in Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, — figures in shade
against figures in full light, and all in the open
air, — that these arrangements are strictly founded

36 Lectures on Painting

on nature, and result from observation. On a
windy day in summer, when clouds are passing,
one constantly sees, but for a moment only, such
effects-— of figures in simlight relieved against a
deep background of shadow, or of near figures
dark in the shadow of houses or trees, with others
in the light beyond ; one sees no end of beautiful
things, but only for a moment. There is no time
to do more than make a mental note, but they
give one a clue which one may follow, and perhaps
be so fortunate as to learn to develop— a clue
to the fine scheme of lighting which these great
artists have mastered and used.

We, in our work, lay too much stress on the
superficial qualities, the imitative ones, and are
unable to grasp these great generalisations.
They won't pose for us, but they wouldn't pose
for Velasquez or Titian either. Then we may feel
when we look at great pictures such as I have
mentioned, and such, for instance, as " The Mar-
riage of Cana," by Veronese, in the Louvre, how
very great and thorough was the knowledge of
the possibilities of light in nature which enabled
them to plan and execute their great works. It

On Lighting and Arrangement 37

is told of Veronese that when someone objected
to his puttmg some figures in shadow, and asked
him why he did it, " A cloud is passing," said he.

But it may often be against the intention of
the painter to draw attention to the sky, and we
find that some — especially portrait painters —
have adopted the artifice of frankly painting
the sky background darker than it would natur-
ally be, as in the portrait of Lord Heathfield, by
Reynolds, where he stands against an intense
black background, which in a little while we
realise is intended for the smoke of the cannon
down on the left.

This is a frank convention. Now, don't let us
despise conventions, but try and understand
them. All conventions rest on some truth.
The convention may have grown so as to obscure
the fundamental truth. Our conception of truth
widens with our experience. The student's is,
as a rule, narrowed down to the particular one he
happens to be struggling with. He is so much
engrossed with the difl&culty of imitation that he
is apt to think this the main truth. But he
should not confine his observation to the life

38 Lectures on Painting

class, or to the time when he is actually painting.
Let him try and notice, as one can, at all times,
how things look at unpremeditated moments,
and he will find as he becomes familiar with the
great men's work that they did so too. He will
come upon their tracks.

It is well, then, when in a good picture we see
some passage we think false or conventional, to
try and understand the intention of the painter
in using it. Almost always it will be found to
have been adopted for the purpose of concen-
trating attention on the principal things. The
painter, by his artifice, seeks to attract our
attention, and so produce the same effect as,
were we ourselves in presence of the scene, our
consciousness would produce in us.

We may copy a scene as truly as we can with
regard to values, and all the rest of it, and find,
after all, that it does not give us the effect of the
actual scene. The reason is that we copy with
an eye looking equally and dispassionately on
everything, as would the lens of a camera, for-
getting the main thing — the human element of
attention, or attraction to some particular part.
A convention by which we would sacrifice sub-

^- :>. 'X

On Lighting and Arrangement 39

ordinate parts for the sake of accenting the
essential is truer to the effect of nature. For all
painting is a partial statement — a reading or
rendering of nature — ^rather than an inventory.
And the different temperaments of artists show
in the particular qualities which each one feels
most impelled to select ; but the desire for
literal truth is always in conflict with this, and
every artist must make a compromise for himself.

There are two extremes in the way artists see
light in nature. One is to half close the eyes.
This takes away a certain quantity of light,
joining all the darks together, and leaving the
high lights as spots. This seems to have been
the way of Rembrandt. He makes the whole
picture lead up to his point of light. There is a
little picture of his — a " Repose in Egj^t " — ^in
one of the German galleries, which shows very
clearly his love of the beauty of light. The
arrangement is typical of many pictures : a
central mass of light, surrounded and led up to
by dark. It is the common arrangement of
portraits and still-life pictures ; also of many of
the old landscapes.

Turner, in his long career, began by seeing

40 Lectures on Painting

nature in the same way as Rembrandt, — ^by con-
centrating on the light, — ^but he studied and
assimilated Claude, and ended by surpassing
him. In his picture of "The Shipwreck," you
will see the same arrangement of a central light
surrounded by dark.

The other way of looking at nature is with the
eyes wide open, as we see in Claude's pictures,
such as the " Queen of Sheba ** in the National
Gallery. In this picture the difference in value
between the sun and adjoining sky is very slight ;
but if in nature we look at the sun only in such
a position, we realise that it is impossible to get
the difference in brightness between it and the
sky. If we half close our eyes so that we can
look at the sun, we find that we cannot see any-
thing else. But if now we look with open eyes
on the whole scene, we realise that not only the
whole sky, but everj^hing else, except the actual
shadows, is governed by, and is part of the
sun's light. The shadows tell out as spots of
colour. This is, it seems to me, the truer way of
looking at nature, and I think Claude was the
first to realise it.

On Lighting and Arrangement 41

Turner, in his later manner, painted in the
same way, as we see in his " Approach to Venice,"
where he has completely left his old manner of
vision, and has realised the infinite gradations
in light.

But this difference between the earlier and the
later manner of Turner is one which is noticeable
in every artist's work. The tendency, with in-
creased knowledge, is to broaden and to lighten.
Rembrandt himself shows a difference between
his earlier and later work. It is the growing
perception of the beauty of light.

In connection with lighting, there is a point of
comparison between the Flemish and the Italian
work generally which is, I think, worth noticing
— ^that is, that the Northern painters, as a rule,
seem to have been more attracted to the surfaces
and textures of things, and to have studied their
models at a closer range than did the Italians.
In some of Diirer's portraits, for example, one
can discern that the high light of the eye shows
the panes of his studio window. And in the
portraits of Holbein, too, we see that evers^hing
must have been studied at extremely dose range.

42 Lectures on Painting

That wonderful work, "The Ambassadors/* in
the National Gallery, is all painted in a clear, even
light with the utmost precision and minuteness,
over every square inch of the panel, apparently
without effort. It is beautiful in colour and har-
monious, and at its distance everything seems in
its place. Yet the figures do not quite hold the
spectator, perhaps because they are placed so
far away from the centre ; partly, too, owing to
the lack of atmosphere, which is almost insepar-
able from the close point of view necessitated by
minute realisation. If we go ^ from this picture
to Velasquez's " Admiral," in the next room, we
see the difference, for in this picture atmosphere
is realised and detail suggested. It seems im-
possible to combine these different qualities —
at anyrate, on a large scale, though it can be
done on a small scale, as we see in the work of
Van Eyck and some of the later Dutchmen.

Holbein's "Duchess of Milan" is finer as a
portrait than " The Ambassadors," for there is
nothing to distract the attention from the face.
But one finds this difference in the way of seeing,
all through the work of the Flemish and Italian

On Lighting and Arrangement 43

schools. It may be due, I think, partly to the
tradition of the antique, which had never been
entirely lost in Italy. And it may be due also
partly to the difference of climate and light in
the two countries. The clear air of Italy would
enable things to be seen plainly at a greater
distance than we can see them here. But I
think the main reason is that the Italian artists
were accustomed to design and paint large
spaces, and that they studied their figures and
groups at a distance suflScient for the eye to take
in the whole group. At this distance, surfaces
and smaller details of modelling would be lost,
and only the broad structural features and
masses of colour remain.

I have mentioned the disturbing influence of
photography on painting. It is hardly neces-
sary to recall that, until the invention of photo-
graphy, there was only one way of seeing things
— ^through the human eye. And all the fine
things have been accomplished by men whose
minds were trained to perception of beauty in
nature through the eye. Now, as Leonardo
pointed out, nature does not define everything,

44 Lectures on Painting

and the triumph of painting has been that it has
realised this, and presented things in degrees of
emphasis corresponding to that in which they
are presented to ns in nature. But the minutely
searching lens of the camera presents everjrthing
with indisputable accuracy, only not as we see
it. How cruel and searching are the majority
of portrait photographs ! Yet the painter, for a
time, tried to rival the camera in minuteness
and detachment, forgetting that it is just this
human quality of attention and selection that
makes a painting a work of art. Photography
itself now seems to admit the pictorial falseness
of its own ideal, and we find photographers
occupied to-day in arranging the tones and con-
centrating the lights of their pictures — ^in fact,
using clumsily all the conventions discovered by
the masters. But photographs, especially snap-
shots of nature, are most interesting and sug-
gestive to look at. I do not think, though, that
photography can in any other way be an aid to
a painter. You cannot make that yours which
the camera chooses to give you. You must
make your own selection from nature.

Ill

ON COLOUR

4S

Ill

ON COLOUR

ONE may say broadly that if drawing is the
intellectual side of art — it is understood
that I refer to the art of painting —
colour is the emotional side. This is not a hard
and fast distinction. It is impossible to make
one where the two qualities are so intimately
connected ; but colour has an effect in echoing
or waking our feelings that drawing alone has
not. This is perhaps because colours them-
selves, even if placed in simple tints without
definite form, suggest to us correspondences
with the colours and effects of things in nature.
Thus blue suggests the sky ; white and yellow,
light ; red, fire or blood ; green suggests the
fields and trees ; and dark colours the night.
One feels this emotional correspondence with
some aspect of nature, or something recognisable
in nature, in every tint of the palette.

47

48 Lectures on Painting

The rules of drawing are fairly definite, and
we may claim to know what constitutes good
and accurate drawing ; but it is not at all easy
to define in what good colouring consists. One
cannot go further than say that it must be har-
monious, and that it must convey the impression
of truth to nature. One can tell bad colouring
at once — ^that the colours are untrue or discord-
ant ; but the limits within which good colotu:
is possible are as wide as the range of emotion
or temperament in man. Any artist will paint
things as he sees or feels them. If he has suc-
ceeded in expressing some truth or beauty, it
will be recognised and felt by some among the
many who will in time see his work.

Nothing in nature is actually the colour that
we see it. It only appears to us at a given
moment as a particular colour in relation to
other apparent colours which surround it. Thus
we may walk out on a rainy evening when the
sky and everything is grey, and come indoors
and light the lamp, and immediately the sky
which we see through the window appears as a
beautiful and tender blue, though there was no

On Colour 49

trace of blue in the sky a minute before, when we
were outside. The change is produced in our
senses by the colour of the sky taking its place
in relation to a range of warm colours in the
lighted room. In the same way the presence of
a man with a lantern, or a light in a window,
will apparently change the colour of things in
its neighbourhood, and a mass of any strong
colour, such as red, blue, or orange, will suggest
its complementary colour in surrounding objects.
(There is a curious exception to this in the case
of lilac or bright violet, which, instead of sug-
gesting its complementary colour in surroimding
things, appears to diffuse its own colour over
them, so that we seem to see a suspicion of violet
in all other neighbouring colours.)

We must realise, then, that each combination
of colours we see presents and forms a problem
of its own. I think this was a difficulty not
present to the . older painters, who — ^perhaps
wisely — seem to have ruled out, or not troubled
about, many subtleties that worry us.

The range of colour that we possess — from
white to black — ^has been proved sufficient to
4

J

50 Lectures on Painting

express the utmost range of colour or light in
nature, from the sun itself in the sky to the
deepest gloom. Yet our range of pigments is
nothing like as wide as the range in nature from
light to shadow. It is wide enough to enable us
to paint, to the point of absolute illusion, an
object receiving light in a room ; but not with
actual light added. For example, one might
paint the portrait of a man, with a white shirt-
front in full light, which would be white, or
nearly so. But if he wore a diamond stud, the
light from this — a reflection of the sky — ^would
be much too bright for our colours. In such a
case it would become necessary to sacrifice the
stud, or to paint the man and the shirt down to
it. It would become a question for the painter
which thing he considered the most important,
and in this way either a light or a dark version
of the man might be true, and both might be
equally beautiful, but on different grounds. One
may imagine this difference of point of view
between Millais and Whistler in their portraits.
The same kind of question arises if we paint a
landscape — ^whether to sacrifice the ground fox

On Colour 51

the sky, or the sky for the ground, or both for
figures, if we introduce them ; and the solution
is the same — ^that the colour of the particular
part one wishes to be the principal must deter-
mine the colour of the secondary things.

We can consider the tints of our palette to be
like the notes on a keyboard, and, in looking at
nature, try and resolve its appearances into a
series of tints in some correspondence with what
we know from experience our colours will pro-
duce. Thus, in looking at a scene, one would
say : " The general tone of the whole is so-and-
so — ^warm, or cold, or whatever it may be ; the
highest light is so-and-so, and the darkest dark
is so-and-so," and having made up our mind on
the general aspect and limits of our problem,
get to work on it in detail.

This is the ordinary way one would begin in
studying from nature in colour. Now we go
on. The scale of colour may be divided into
warm and cold colours, and all colours we see in
nature incline either to warm or cold — I am pre-
suming we are making a study from nature — ^not
only in themselves, but according to the degree

52 Lectures on Painting

in which they are influenced by light. We shall,
I think, never find light and shadow on an
object equally warm or equally cool. This
would be a monochrome, like an etching or an
engraving, which suggests colour, but does not
give it ; and those engravings best suggest colour
which are printed in black or neutral tints, and
not in a positive colour, for our imagination
supplies the colour if the gradations are right.
But in ordinary daylight in a room the lights are
cool, and the shadows are warm in colour. So,
out of doors in warm sunshine, we get the lights
warm and the shadows cool, even to the point of
absolute blue or violet. This brings me to one of
the difficulties of outdoor painting — the tendency,
especially if sunlight be attempted, to paint in
too cold a key, so that a study which, at the time
we were engaged on it seemed absolutely true,
should afterwards, when brought into the even
light of a room, fail to give the impression of
warmth that the original scene gave. We often
see pictures of sunshine painted which give us
no impression whatever of warmth.
I think the reason of this is that we do not

On Colour 53

realise how warm the colour of the light is, being
enveloped in it, perhaps even having it on our
work — at anyrate, having our eyes filled with it.
We are struck by the sharp contrast of the cool
shadow, and paint that, it being obviously cool.
But if we concede that the light is warm, we can
get the opposition of the cooL shadow, and get it
to look blue, or almost so, even though as pigment
it may be umber and white, or grey. A difficulty
of the same kind is felt with regard to the blue
of the sky, which, under some effects, appears
as blue as one can possibly make it — ^bluer, even
— ^and at the same time warm. We may pile on
our brightest blue as much as we like, we cannot
get it blue enough, and we cannot at the same
time get it warm. Now, we know that the
bright blues of our palette, when we look at them
in a room, are bright enough to give the sense
of any conceivable blue ; so we may conclude
that the fault does not lie in our paints, but in
ourselves, as not knowing how to manage them,
and that we must try and make the blue look
more blue by accenting the complementary
colours and painting the ground and surround-

54 Lectures on Painting

ings warmer — i.e. by painting the whole picture
in a warmer key.

There is the danger, of course, of going over to
the other extreme, but of the two it is better to
err on the side of warmth than of coldness ; and
I think that probably one reason of the fineness
of colour of the Venetians is that they had the
possible blue of the sky in their minds, if not in
their pictures, as a key and point of contrast
with their other colours. But doubtless the main
jreason was the situation and importance of
Venice, and its relations with the East ; which
gave its artists the finest possible opportunities of
stud3ang colour. People of all races were there,
dressed in fine and varied colours, and moving
among beautiful buildings, with the sea and sky
for background ; and the Venetian artists had
this fine show daily before their eyes, under all
conditions of lighting. All the possibilities of
colour would become familiar to them, and we
can understand how the influence of their sur-
roundings led them to their great results.

If we aim at getting the utmost fulness of colour
in the lights, as the Venetians did, the limited

On Colour 55

range of our colours makes this impossible in the
darks. It becomes necessary, then, to keep all
the darks together, treating them very broadly.
You will find the old painters were never afraid
of strong darks or dark shadows. Sir Joshua
Reynolds advises that in a picture the shadows
should be all of one colour ; or, at least, he says,
they should appear to be of one colour, meaning
that the eye should not rest on nor question them.
And though the old pictures impress one as being
darker than nature, — and so, in the sense of the
general colour of nature, untrue, — ^yet in them-
selves and within their conditions they give a
true impression of nature.

We have not the opportimity of studjdng fine
colours that the old painters had ; our life goes
on in more sombre dress. Still, there is fine colour
to be seen wherever the sun shines, here as else-
where, and of late years the search for the fulness
of colour, with light, has led artists to the furthest
limits of the palette, and the most violent means,
in endeavouring to get the range and force of
colour in the shadows as well as in the lights, so
that we find pictures painted in spots of pure

56 Lectures on Painting

pigment placed side by side, the intention being
that they should fuse together in the eye of the
spectator. But the result is not successful ; it is
distressing to the eye, and, I think, shows that
something must be sacrificed at one end of the
scale or the other. And yet, if we paint in a
very high key, in simple tints, I question if we are
not in some danger of starving our colour for the
sake of keeping our pictures light. White paint
will not of itself express light, but only by contrast
with dark.

To get colour and light is the great thing.
The difficulty is to get them both. Turner, in
his Italian landscapes, enhanced the colour of his
sky by a dark pine-tree in the foreground, sacri-
ficing the colour of the tree for the sake of
accenting its value and warmth ; and the old land-
scape painter's device of a brown tree is used for
the same end — ^to make the blue of the sky and
distance more^ luminous and beautiful. This is
also the reason for the dark-brown foreground
usual in old landscapes ; and our eye is not
arrested by the tree or the dark foreground, but
goes past it to the point of the picture.

On Colour 57

Rembrandt, in his colouring, seems to have
avoided blue altogether, gaining the sense of it
by the opposition of golden-brown to grey. The
secret of his wonderful colour is diflftcult to read,
A passing impression of one of his pictures is of
a work all in golden-brown, with fine reds and
strong blacks. But when one has looked long
enough at it to get into the picture, as it were,
this sense of a particular colour disappears, and
we feel ourselves in presence of the actual scene,
with its air, colour, and light.

I do not think we should try and imitate the
colour of the old painters, though we can, by
study, see in nature the indications of, and per-
haps the reasons for, their method of work.
It would be hopeless, for instance, for anyone to
try and imitate Rembrandt's colouring ; and
probably Rembrandt himself would be unable
to explain his method, but would simply say,
" I saw it so," or " I wished to express a particular
sentiment."

There is the question of quality of colour —
another difficult thing to define, though we recog-
nise it readily. It does not seem to depend on

58 Lectures on Painting

truth of rdations, or even on truth of colour, for a
picture may be true in colour and yet the paint
itself may be bad in quality— opaque, heavy, or
showing much labour. But there is fine quality
of colour in works differing as much from each
other in method as Rembrandt and the Primitives,
as Raphael and Franz Hals, as Velasquez and
Titian. It means that the work impresses one
as having clearness, freshness, and that, in short,
the impression is produced of nature, and not of
paint.

There are two methods of painting, and good
quality of colour can be achieved by either. One
method is that of simple and direct painting —
that we put down the right colour at once with
fresh, untroubled paint, as in a sketch, and we
know how often there is greater charm in a sketch
than in a finished work. This is the method of
Hals, of Velasquez, of Moroni, and of most
modems. The other method is the elaborate one
of preparing an underpainting, more or less of
the nature of monochrome, with reference only to
the drawing and massing of light and shade, and
then painting by thin glazes, or by working over

On Colour 59

thin glazes with the right colours, the under
coloturs showing through, and giving a richness
and transparency, I think we see this in the work
of Rubens and of Titian, though, of course, we
nearly always see both direct and glazed colour
in the same work, as in that most marvellous head
by Rembrandt, of himself as an old man, in the
National Gallery. The object of underpainting
and glazing is, of course, to retain the freshness
which is so easily lost in oil painting, if the same
colour is painted over and over ; especially as
when half-dry, or if much medium is used, it
becomes muddy : stiff colour stands fairly well.

Another object of underpainting is the deter-
nuning of the design in light and dark. All paint
changes a little, lowers a little, with time ; and if
a picture has no strong arrangement of light and
dark, but depends for its beauty on subtle deli-
cacies and differences of value, these are often lost
in a few years through the flattening down of the
paint ; while if there is a strong backbone, as it
were, of light and shade beneath the colour, the
picture will always be effective, and the main
features remain, in spite of any little changes.

6o Lectures on Painting

The painter has to make the quality of his paint
in oil-colour. If you compare oil- with water-
colour you will see what I mean ; for if you put a
simple wash of colour on paper it is alwajrs beau-
tiful, because of its transparency, and it is difficult
to lose this quality in water-colour; but it is
difficult to get it in oil, and still more difficult
to retain it throughout a work.

Good quaUty is a measure of the painter's per-
ception. Two men will paint a plain blue sky,
using, perhaps, the same pigment. One man will
give you the actual sense of the sky and the air,
and the other nothing but blue paint. The differ-
ence between them is that one man had perception
of the quality of the sky, and the other had not.
So, when we see a good quality in paint, we know
that it means not only niceness of hand and per-
ception, but great knowledge and judgment in the
artist. It all comes back to the same old story —
that we must work, and cultivate our perceptions.

I have spoken of the emotional power of colour
— i.e. the power which colours in themselves have
in inducing a mood — as an important element in
painting. The sad, golden tone of Rembrandt

On Colour 6 1

seems to strike the keynote of his sentiment, and
to bring us into his frame of mind before we
realise his subject. In the same way, the rich .
reds and warm colours of Titian, Rubens, and
Reynolds produce in our minds the sense of
activity, richness, and splendour, quite irre-
spective of the drawing or modelling of their
figures, or their meaning.

If they had painted their figures as they would
look in the cold light of a studio, this effect would
not have been produced.

The picture of Admiral Keppel by Re3niolds, in
the present Old Masters Exhibition, is painted in
a clear grey key of daylight — a realistic effect, as
an5rone might see it ; and one may infer from this
that in those instances where Reynolds darkened
down his pictures with rich warm glazes, it was
done designedly, in order to produce an effect
by the means of colour.

I think, then, that we may conclude in these
cases — I may mention as an example an " Adora-
tion of the Magi," by Filippino Lippi, in the
National Gallery, where red and gold and other
rich colours are pushed to their extreme power —

62 Lectures on Painting

that painters deliberately employed the emotional
power of colour^ as colour, quite apart from any
immediate resemblance to nature, in order to
produce an effect on the mood of the spectator.
And it must be the most difficult thing of all in
painting, to do this so as to include general truth
of resemblance.

But these paths are outside the track of most
artists to-day. Our efforts are not so much
directed to imaginative subjects, as to actualities,
and our endeavour is to find and express thebeauty
which exists among us. We are more literal, less
imaginative ; and this enhancing of nature by the
power of colour is beyond us. We feel that it may
be possible to paint with our first and main refer-
ence to nature as we see it around us, and, while
trying to understand what has been done, to
claim still that beauty of colour may be found also
in the plain aspect of visible things even to-day.

It is for this reason, I think, that the art of
Velasquez specially appeals to us. In it the
ordinary aspects of nature are foimd to be not
inconsistent with the finest art. There is nothing
conventional in his colour. It is simply like that

On Colour 63

of nature, and I think that none but artists, or
those who have studied the appearance of nature,
can quite understand the intense admiration his
work excites. It is not, as in the case of Titian
and the colourists, an emotion produced by colour,
as colour, taking us beyond our ordinary sensa-
tions ; but it gives us something of the pleasure of
a surprise, in finding and recognising that such
beautiful modulations of colour are apparent
under ordinary conditions. Velasquez is some-
times, ^perhaps rightly, called unemotional, be-
cause his colour is not prearranged to influence us,
but is, as it were, an impartial statement, as con-
trasted with the work of those painters who
pushed the emotional power of colour to its
extreme limit.

As I hope to consider the work of Velasquez
later, I will not touch further on it now, but may
mention one or two men of kindred spirit. Char-
din, the French painter, gives us very beautiful
colour in his still-life paintings in the Louvre, and
there is one in the National Gallery. We are
shown, not what beautiful things are painted, but
how beautiful they appear under the influence <5f

64 Lectures on Painting

light. The effect of one colour on another, the
harmony of the different tints produced by light
on a few simple things — these things may be seen
in his work ; as also in the work of Edouard Manet,
who had much the same feeling as Velasquez for
the beauty of colour in simple, cool lighting, and
expressed it with a directness of vision and execu-
tion (being able by a true eye to strike the tint at
once) that gives his colour a very great charm.

The splendid work of Sir John Millais — the
" North- West Passage " and the " Yeomen of the
Guard," for example — ^appeal to us in the same
way, as fine painting and fine colour, apart from
the interest of the subject. And that great artist
who died recently — Mr. Whistler — ^has not only
given us the example of a fine and simple method
in painting, but has shown us more fully than any
other artist the modulations of colour by light.
In his portraits, with their fine realisation of the
effects of atmosphere on colour, and in his pictures
of twilight and of night, he has recorded effects
which no artist before him had attempted. We
can all see these things now, and how beautiful
they are, but Mr. Whistler was the one who showed

On Colour 65

us. He was, I think, the one artist since Turner
who has extended the range of the a^ist's vision
in the direction of revealing to us the beauty of
colour as it appears in nature.

I have already spoken of the painter's main
difficulty — ^in determining the proper relation of
parts to the whole — ^in the matter of lighting and
arrangement of his picture. This is also the
main difficulty in colouring, and the only solution
I can give you is that you should, at least once,
endeavour to have the scene you are painting —
if it is of such a nature that you can do this —
actually before you, and to consider it as a whole,
taking in the whole scene as comprehensively as
possible ; and so you can judge the effect of one
colour against another, and see which colour
strikes you most unmistakably, and so gives the
keynote to the rest. We should study in the
same way anything we happen to see that strikes
us as having the material for a picture.

Truth or beauty of colour is the main thing
in a picture. It is, m fact, the only thing that
gives a picture a high place among the master-
pieces. A picture that is well drawn and modelled
5

66 Lectures on Painting

only will interest, but will be passed by in favour
of colour. For colour touches us more deeply ;
its sense is more instinctive. A child will be
excited by colours, but indifferent to form. We
all, artists or not, have some latent memory or
mental image, which is called forth in us when
we look at a picture, and recognise, or fail to
recognise, nature in it ; not, I think, so much
by our memories of form, as by our memories of
the colour and general appearance of nature.

We can only see what we have learned to look
for. An uneducated person will consider a face
in a picture beautiful if it has bright eyes, pink
cheeks, and red lips ; or a landscape beautiful
if it also presents him with the obvious facts. It
will be enough for him ; it is as much as he sees
in nature. But Nature does not reveal her
beauties unsought, and the study of paintings
by those who are not artists is not only an educa-
tion, but an added pleasure to their lives, enlarg-
ing and directing their minds, so that they learn
to detect and appreciate beauties in nature to
which they would otherwise have been blind.

IV
TITIAN, VELASQUEZ, AND REMBRANDT

IV
TITIAN, VELASQUEZ, AND REMBRANDT

IN speaking of these great artists, the greatest
masters of painting that the world has
seen, I do not propose to do more than
make a rough comparison of their main qualities,
with the idea of indicating the points of agree-
ment and of difference between them. It seems
almost an impertinence to speak at all of men
who are above discussion or praise, whose names
alone suggest the finest painting, and each of
whom in his own way has reached the limits of
achievement. One might discuss all the pro-
blems of painting by reference only to what each
has done. I am not qualified to do this, but
can only give my own, perhaps superficial,^ im-
pressions of their work.

It seems to me that the differences which divide
Italian painting into schools are of much less

69

70 Lectures on Painting

account than are the great qualities these schools
had in common — ^a noble simplicity of form,
broad lighting, and rich, full colouring. Indeed,
to my mind there are only two schools of Italian
painting — ^Michelangelo is the one, and the rest
of the Italian painters all come together in the
other. The great ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
stands apart from, and beyond, all other work ;
but of all the other Italians, Titian most fully
represents the finest painting. By his great
genius he brought together the theories of his
predecessors, and carried on their practice to a
degree of completeness which cannot be sur-
passed. Velasquez said, " It is Titian who bears
the banner " ; whether in subject pictures or
portraits, his work is perfect in all the qualities
of painting, and it may almost be said that he
has done with colour all that can be done.

He is the meeting-point of the old and the new.
His work combines minuteness and freedom.
His early training must have given him the
power he possessed of treating detail with the
most dainty fineness, yet keeping it always in
its place, never letting it appear laboured or

Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt 71

obtrusive. There is a " Madonna " of his in the
Vienna Gallery — an early work — that has the
clearness and simplicity of the Primitives, with
a greater fulness. It is carried to the finest
point of realisation, with seemingly the greatest
ease. It is one of the most beautiful things in
the Gallery.

Titian chose, as a rule, a simple mode of Ught-
ing — a warm daylight, or evening light, upon his
figures ; not concentrating the interest on one
main point of his picture by suppression of minor
things, but controlling it from one end to the
other, and including ever3^hing in his attention.
His effect was produced by devices of composi-
tion which he invented, or developed, from his
own observation of nature. I have already
indicated how, by relieving figures in light by
figures and objects in shade, or by uniting figures
and groups by shadows— on the ground, on or
from trees and buildings— he constructed his
pictures, using these momentary effects of con-
trast which we may notice for ourselves in
nature. These devices, besides enabling him
to make his picture by placing his principal

72 Lectures on Painting

objects in prominence, give us the sense of living
and moving nature ; of man not merely posed
against a background of landscape or building,
but in the scene, and part of its setting, so that
one influence is felt throughout. And in this
use of landscape, as well as in his treatment of
landscape as a mood of nature, and not a tran-
script of nature, Titian was the first and one of
the greatest of landscape painters.

His method was usually to keep the principal
parts of his picture warm and light, and this
warmth was enhanced by the blue of the sky,
which he frequently used in his background ; and
the colours of his principal figures were made to
tell out strongly, as well as separated from the
background, by masses or spaces of shadow in
the middle distance ; as we see in the picture of the
** Entombment " in the Louvre. We may notice,
too, in this picture how the central light is packed
round with various colours — rich reds and dark
greens — ^in the dresses of the supporting figures.

When we endeavour, in cold blood, as it were,
to gauge the actual colour of his work by com-
paring it with white, its richness and depth are

Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt 73

amazing. It seems, indeed, to go beyond the
power of the palette as we know it, but, of course,
it cannot be so ; and it is recorded that Titian
used few and very simple colours to produce his
fine harmonies. I doubt if his work owes much
to the mellowing of age. It must alv^jfs have
been fine and rich, and I think, as I have said,
that the Italian painters were led in the direction
of warm and glowing colour through feeling
strongly the beauty of blue ; for, as we know, it
is only by keeping the whole tone of a picture
warm that the beauty of blue can be expressed.
How this richness was produced, this depth
without darkness, has been again and again dis-
cussed. It is called the " Venetian secret," and
certainly no other painting is so full of colour ;
and is considered — I think rightly — ^to have been
produced by first painting a solid monochrome
in tempera, on which the picture was finished, in
its colours, in oil. But we need not trouble much
about the method, for whatever it was, great
knowledge, and that only, was the secret of Titian,
as of all the other masters. This is brought
home to us when we see a number of fine pictures

74 Lectures on Painting

of different schools hanging side by side, as in
the Salon Carr€ of the Louvre, where there are
on the same wall, works by painters as different
in their methods as Rembrandt and Giorgione,
Da Vinci and Velasquez, Raphael and Holbein,
all agreeing together like good brothers. Their
methods are as various as may be, but great
knowledge was the basis of them all.

When in presence of one of Titian's pictures
we are conscious of their being true to a noble
vision of nature, — i.e. that particular elements
have been chosen and put before us, — ^and we
feel, although we are not alwajrs conscious of it,
except by comparison with other men's work, a
sentiment, which by means of colour alone he has
conveyed to us. I think the sentiment of his
pictures is communicated but little by form or
expression, and almost entirely by the emotional
power of their colour. His figures have the
natural grace and gravity of their race, with an
air of nobility, and, as Reynolds says, of senatorial
dignity, of his own ; but to me they seem to go
through their actions as in a formal pageant, with-
out interest, with something even of an air of

Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt 75

indifference. There is in them nothing of the
familiar, passionate hmnan interest— of insight,
ahnost, one feels, into the very souls of his sub-
jects, that we find in Rembrandt ; which moves
us so deeply, and makes us — at anyrate, I find
it so — ^to hold Rembrandt nearer to our hearts
than any other artist. Titian's power is in the
beauty of his colour, and this is the special power
of the painter. By his command of colour he
imposes his mood upon us without our knowledge,
making us look at nature through his eyes.

Titian was greatest as a portrait painter, as
Reynolds has said. In arrangement, and in
painting, and in character also, although he
does not give so searching a reading as Rem-
brandt, they are as fine as can be. We have
none in our National Gallery, but there is a very
fine portrait in the Louvre, the "Man with the
Glove.'* This work is beautifully drawn and
modelled, the head very simply and broadly, so
that everything seems left out, but everything
essential is there. The head is not forced out
into the highest light, as is the usual practice
now, but is kept lower in tone than the linen,

*]6 Lectures on Painting

which is the brightest light, and each colour tells
in its natural degree. I should imagine that his
painting-room was not lighted in our ordinary
way, from the north, but probably from the
south, with a veiled light, and that he painted
or studied sometimes out of doors ; for the light-
ing of his pictures could, I think, only have been
arrived at by stud3dng in simlight, or perhaps
by artificial light. His portraits seem to me to
have very much the effect, both in colour and
modelling, of people as seen by the light of a
candle, where the light is reflected from the
bright colours only, and is absorbed by the dark
ones.

The influence of Titian can be traced in the
work of all succeeding painters. Both Velasquez
and Rembrandt owe something to him ; Velas-
quez more than Rembrandt, as he was better
acquainted with his work. But the influence of
Titian, of Rubens, and of Tintoret on Velasquez
only supplemented, and did not lead him away
from, his own frank and straightforward view of
nature.

We know, now that we have his whole life's

Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt 77

work before us, that Velasquez had the surest
eye and the truest hand of any artist who has
ever lived, or at least that he was the equal in
this respect of any other artist ; but if we look
at his early work in the National Gallery, we
find that it is not "clever" in any sense. It is
most uncompromising, somewhat heavy-handed,
one may almost say common, in its execution;
suggesting not brilliant ability, but clear insight
and determination^ We may notice in this picture
— the small still-life group with figures, called
" Christ in the House of Martha " — ^how every-
thing is set down relentlessly and thoroughly;
and in another early work, the " Dead Warrior,"
we see the same thing-'— everything is painted
deliberately and apparently without alterations.
It is only those who try to paint who know how
much knowledge, how much determination, this
implies.

But so much is said of the freedom of Velas-
quez's painting, and so often is his name used to
justify careless and sloppy work, that one may
be allowed to draw attention again to the old
truth — that this freedom was only gained at the

78 Lectures on Painting

price of labour, greater than most of his wor-
shippers seem willing or able to undertake ; and
that the charm of his painting is that, with all
its freedom, it is so careful and so beautifully
drawn. He having, by great labour, learnt what
to do, practice gave him a ready means to his
end. It is surely, then, a mistaken idea for an
artist to think that he can begin in Velasquez's
later manner, where he left off. If he will follow
this great master, let him begin as the master
began, and tramp the whole road.

The work of Velasquez seems to reveal the
temperament of a dispassionate observer, with
an eye so keen and so thoroughly trained that
nothing escapes him ; but he does not show us
his own feeling towards his sitter. In other
painters' work, we get at least some hint of the
artist's feeling towards the persons he brings
before us, but we do not get this in Velasquez.
He is a perfect mirror. His attitude is that of
one apart, or aloof, from his feUows, under-
standing, but without appearing to show S3mi-
pathy or enthusiasm. These feelings seem to be
reserved for the painting itself, though in some

Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt 79

of his pictures, such as the " Surrender of Breda,"
where, I fancy, the Itahan infiuence can be seen,
and in some of his dwarfs, there is, I think,^ — I
have not seen the pictures themselves, and only
know them from photographs and copies, — a little
nearer approach to his persons, a little less de-
tachment than usual.

In examining his work we can follow with
delight the interest he must have felt in record-
ing the things before him, and yet the final im-
pression remains that the picture was not painted
for the sake of fine painting, and that his manner
was but his ready way of expressing his subject.
When we look at that fine portrait of the Admiral
in the National Gallery, we think only of the
man who stands before us, as he stood before the
painter ; and it is only when we come near and
realise the extreme simplicity of the means by
which the illusion of his presence is produced
that we are amazed at the painter's skill. These
odd, apparently unrelated, touches of colour,
which we see at close quarters, explain them-
selves and take their place when the picture is
seen at its proper distance. The fine portrait

8o Lectures on Painting

of Pope Innocent x. in Rome impresses in the
same way.

The later work of Velasquez is the finest of all.
One cannot imagine direct painting finer than
the head of Philip iv. in the National Gallery,
and it has every appearance of being done with
ease and certainty. There is no display, no trace
of effort, no " execution." And in what must be
his finest work, " Las Meniiias,** of which I have
only seen a study, a problem of the utmost com-
plexity in gradation is solved with apparently
the greatest ease. The arrangement is so easy
and natural that one does not realise its con-
smnmate art. How beautifully the figures are
proportioned to the room, and how finely the
large dark empty space above contrasts with the
light and sparkle of the figures ! His paint
charms by its clear silvery colour and by what
looks like unconscious certainty in his handling,
and this must have come to him naturally, un-
sought. But the great interest of his work lies
in the fact that it is so " modem,** that he paints
things as we see them ; and this has been well
pointed out by the late R. A. M. Stevenson in his

Velasquez

Prado

LAS MENINAS

. ^'-.-

Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt 8 1

excellent appreciation of Velasquez^ which I
should advise you to read.

Rembrandt in some of his works, as in the
" Syndics," at Amsterdam, is as fine and rich in
colour as Titian ; but in the range and variety
of his Ughting, and in the interest he shows in
life and character, he goes beyond either Titian
or Velasquez. Every portrait, every picture
indeed that he painted, seems to have been
undertaken as a problem of lighting, as well as
of character; but there is nearly always, I
think, some reflection of himself in his portraits,
and if detachment is the ideal, he was inferior
to Titian or Velasquez in this respect. But he
was greater, perhaps, than any other painter in
human feeling and sympaihy, in dramatic sense
and invention ; and his imagination seems inex-
haustible.

His qualities, however, do not strike us at
once. If we come from looking at Titian, or
any of the fine Italians, to Rembrandt, our first
impressibn is of plebeian coarseness, of uncouth-
ness, and even of vulgarity, and all these qualities
are there. But if we can put aside our pre-

82 Lectures on Painting

]udices> and try to understand his meaning, we
find, after a time — ^it takes a little time — ^that
beauty may wear the most unlikely dress. We
discover beauties of design, of delicate drawing,
and of sentimoit, and a depth and intensity of
feeling so convincing, that the ugliness of his
types becomes of small accoimt. Compare, for
example, Rembrandt's etching of the " Descent
from the Cross," either the large or the small
plate (the small one is the better, for probably the
design only of the large plate is Rembrandt's)
with the " Entombment " by Titian. The tragic
side of the scene is finely given by Rembrandt, and
Titian's picture is formal in comparison with it,
although this is one of his most expressive works.
Rembrandt's 6ye seems to have been always
attracted to the point of light, or the source of
light, when the actual colours of objects were
rather suggested than seen, or if the light shone
on objects it was always focussed on the princi-
pal parts by shadows ; and we find his work
characterised by the most searching study
of shadows and their infinite gradations, as well
as of the diffusion of light. This study of light

Rembraruit

National Gallery

THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS

Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt 83

and shade in his pictures is so thorough as to
seem an end and object in itself, but it was only
with him the means of expressing or enhancing
his idea. The idea and its presentation are in-
separable, and his pictures seem to be imagined
rather than constructed. He seems to take a
suggestion from some very ordinary scene, and
to carry it on in his mind and make it significant ;
as in the " Adoration of the Shepherds *' in the
National Gallery, the light and shade motive of
which was probably inspired by something he
happened to see in a stable.

This is, to my mind, one of his most beautiful
works. If we look at it long enough to get
beyond the paint, we find ourselves in the stable,
taking part in the scene, with the shepherds ; we
seem even to know them well. The lighting,
expression, gesture, and sentiment in this work are
all natural and true ; and the picture in the Wallace
Collection, the " Unmerciful Servant," with the
figures starting out of the deep background, is
also an instance of his lighting, or conceiving a
picture so as— unconsciously, it seems — to em-
phasise the dramatic element in the story.

84 Lectures on Painting

There is something greater and deeper in this than
the mere artifice of lighting. The " Supper at
Emmaus," and the " Good Samaritan," both in
the Louvre, are instances of this marvellous power
of conceiving his subject which can be seen in all
his works, even in the sUghtest sketch.

Two drawings are reproduced here from the
British Museum CoUection. These drawings of
his, made on the impulse of the moment, with
expression as the one aim, show the richness of his
imagination and his mastery more clearly than
do his paintings, where other aims and problems
enter, and sometimes confuse or obscure the
thought. They are most wonderful in directness
and expressiveness ; in a happy instinctive right-
ness of arrangement, which seems inevitable.
Every essential thing is given with the slightest
of means — ^with the greatest economy of line ;
yet they are not slight sketches, but full and
complete expressions.

We should study his drawings and the magnifi-
cent series of his etchings, as well as his paintings,
for not only do we see in these the great range of
his invention and expression, but his fine draughts-

'#.

1 *iii^ffi.»u

Rembrandt

JOSEPH CONSOLING THE PRISONERS
(pen drawing)

British Museum

Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt 85

manship. It is, too, in his drawings, but most of
all in his etchings, that we see Rembrandt's
greatness in landscape. As an etcher, he is
beyond question the greatest master, and the
completeness and deUcacy of his plates has never
been surpassed. His etchings alone number about
three hundred, and there are about four hundred
and fifty of his paintings, and some hundreds of
drawings, so that his life must have been one of
unflagging industry, of constant progress towards
perfection ; everything that he touched is fine
in some way. And if we think of this enormous
nmnber of works from his hand, and their great
perfection ; and realise how readily his work must
have been done, and how few mistakes were
made, we can understand what is meant by
mastery.

Our knowledge of art is wider than that of our
predecessors. Not that we have greater abilities,
but we have greater opportunities of judging and
making comparisons between schools. And time
has helped us in coming to some conclusion on
the vital question : On what does the reputation
of an artist rest ? His work should express some

86 Lectures on Painting

kind of beauty ; it should be true to some aspect
of nature ; but» above all, it seems to me that
an artist should be true to himself. In the work
of all great artists we feel that we make the ac-^
quaintance of a person, and share a personal view
— ^as in Titian, the interest is in the rich and
beautiful aspect of nature ; in Velasquez, in an
absolute truth of presentation, with no prefer^
ence; while Rembrandt saw with the eye of a
poet, looking for the soul of things through their
outward appearances.

Rembrandt in his later years, when he was
producing his finest work, was, as we know,
poor, and in such obscurity that his death was
unnoticed by his contemporaries; and Michel,
in his interesting book on Rembrandt, enforces
this by quoting Gerard de Lairesse, who wrote
of Rembrandt some thirty years after his death,
that *' in his efforts to attain mellow colour he
merely achieved the effect of rottenness. The
vulgar and prosaic aspects of a subject were the
only ones he was capable of noting, and his
colours lie like liquid mud on the canvas," etc.
He goes on to say that in early life he was much

■ ,r:r-T)i

Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt 87

attracted by Rembrandt's manner^ and thought
of following it, but better counsels prevailed !
Gerard was an artist of some standing, and a
follower of the Classic tradition, as the Dutch-
men imderstood it ; but the world has very
willingly let his work die, while Rembrandt has
come to his own.

The history of art shows that an artist's work
lives by its own vitality rather than by following
blindly a tradition, however noble. And the
innovator is usually, in his lifetime, decried ; it
must be so. But sometimes it is recognised
afterwards that the innovator was the loyal
follower of good tradition, and that his opponents
merely imagined they were. The work of the
great minds, the great masters, remains unap-
proachable, and is, if possible, more highly
esteemed now than ever ; but where are the
Caracci, Carlo, Maratta, Pompeo Battoni, and
the rest who were so highly esteemed in their
day ? They are — ^perhaps a little imdeservedly
— forgotten, for they were able painters ; but
their glory is absorbed again into that of their
masters. For, as Jean Francois Millet said :

88 Lectures on Painting

" Decadence set in when people began to believe
that art was the supreme end ; when such and
such an artist was taken as model and aim, without
remembering that he had his eyes fixed on
infinity."

V
ON LANDSCAPE AND OPEN-AIR PAINTING

ON LANDSCAPE AND OPEN-AIR PAINTING

THE main development of painting in the
last century has been in the direction of
landscape paintings and, as allied to it,
of figures under the conditions of outdoor lighting
— ^in the open air. We may go back to the Italian
Primitives for the first landscape painters,
although landscape was then only an accessory,
and did not, as a rule, consist of more than a sky
and a view of distant country, used as a back-
ground for figures. But these little glimpses of
landscape, especially the skies, are most inter-
esting and beautiful. I do not» indeed, thmk
that skies have at any time been painted which
give the feeling of light so beautifully, or a finer,
purer sentiment in the landscape itself. There is
a very fine instance in the large fresco by Peru-
gino in the National Gallery— a picture repre-

91

94 Lectures on Painting

we come down to Rembrandt, whose influence is
still the leading one in the Dutch school. There
is a little-known Dutch artist, Hercules Seghers,
a landscape painter, who lived a little before
Rembrandt, and is believed to have greatly
influenced him in his feeling for landscape. I
think only one of his paintings is definitely known ;
but there are a number of very beautiful etchii^s
in the British Museum, some printed in different
colours, a method which he is believed to have
invented. These are very remarkable works, and
should be studied. From Rembrandt, through
Ruisdael, Hobbema, Vermeer of Delft, down to
our Norwich school, to Gainsborough and Con-
stable, and to Turner, the connection is all clearly
traceable and well known. The great French
school of the forties — the Romanticists, as they
are called — Rousseau, Corot, Daubigny, and their
aUies, received their impulse through Constable.
Delacroix was influenced by him also ; and the
later impressionistic developments of landscape
painting in France may be traced to the inspira-
tion of Turner.
Any view of outdoor nature may be said to be

Landscape and Open-air Painting 95

a landscape ; it may be the barest record of
facts, or it may give something like a vision, with
hardly any support at all from facts : the range
is very wide. But in what does the charm of a
landscape consist ? It must be a record of a
scene ; that is, it must be true to the appearance,
and must show the facts of nature under the
influence of some definite effect of light. But
there must be something more. An accurate
record of a scene, although it may be true to the
facts, will not charm, will not move us so much
as a picture where the effect, or sentiment, of
atmosphere or light is the dominating motive.

Constable pointed out that painters should not
think that the sky terminated at the horizon, but
should realise that it comes all through the picture,
and close up to us. That there is a particular
tree, river, or hill in a certain place is of no great
interest. The interest for us lies in seeing or
recognising the great elemental forces of nature,
living and acting in and through the little things
upon the earth. A landscape should not be so
much an inventory as a transcript or translation
of a mood of nature. Its appeal is to the primi-

96 Lectures on Painting

tive instincts — ^not to primitive people, not so
much to people who pass their lives in the open
air ; for they take nature and its changes as a
matter of course, and look on the weather as a
capricious master whose whims have to be met,
and a tree only as so much timber, or flocks and
herds as so much stock. This is really quite a
natural and proper view, but the artist's view
is outside this ; and a picture of landscape appeals
mainly to the primitive instincts of cultivated
people, of people who live in cities, who look
from the standpoint of civilisation with a senti-
mental longing towards a more simple state.
The French gallants and ladies of the eighteenth
century liked to imagine themselves shepherds
and shepherdesses ; and we, with our increased
development of commerce and industry, have
an increased appreciation of landscape, as if,
since we cannot live with Nature, we would still
be reminded of and be brought, even at second
hand, into association with her.

The wide range of vision or treatment in land-
scape, as compared with that of figure painting,
makes it difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at

Landscape and Open-air Painting 97

any rules which can be generally applied ; for
selection of subject seems more determined by
emotion or impulse, and less by reason, than in
figure work. The landscape painter is more in-
stinctive than the figure painter, and, as a rule,
is less definite in his study of form, or seems so ;
but has a finer sense of gradation of colour. But
the building up of a landscape seems governed
by pretty much the same unformulated rules as
of a figure picture, and to depend on the same
elements — the balancing of light by dark, and
the contrast of warm and cool colour, so that the
masses of the picture shall be agreeable to the eye ;
and the study of pictures, carried on concur-
rently with the study of nature, is the only way
by which a student can learn how he can bring
his vision of nature within the limits of a picture.
I mean, by the study of pictures, that the student
should follow the plan indicated by Sir Joshua
Re3molds, and, if a picture pleases him, take the
trouble to note and, if necessary, make a memo-
randum of the general masses of light and dark,
where they come, and in what degree, so as to
learn the general disposition of the main things.
7

98 Lectures on Painting

All the great landscape painters have presented
Nature in the way I have indicated, as records
of her moods. Claude, in his picture of the
" Queen of Sheba," did not, we may be sure, care
about the Queen of Sheba at all. She was only a
point for his picture ; nor was he much interested
in the towers, columns, and palaces which frame
his picture. What he wanted to paint, what
he wanted to impress upon us, was the beauty
of the evening sun shining in the clear sky over
the sea ; and so well did he do it that the sun
stiU shines in his picture, after over two hundred
years. No one but Turner has ever equalled
him in the knowledge of subtle gradations of
light. An infinite space in air is suggested with-
out forcing the range of colour ; for the lightest
part of the picture is far from white, and the
darkest part by no means black.

In another picture of his, " The Marriage of
Isaac and Rebecca," also in the National Gallery,
the subject is not the marriage, which is a mere
incident, to give excuse for some figures as spots
of colour, but the beautiful peep of sunlit country
seen through the trees. In this picture we may

v^:

^,~ ' ^^

')

>J'

''U'.

Landscape and Open-air Painting 99

remark how the dark trees accent the sky and
the river, and how dark they have to be painted
to express the Ughtness of the sky. Their colour
is sacrificed to their tone. Claude did not wish
us to look really at anything but the stretch of
open country. We notice the trees, but our eye
goes through to the distance.

Wilson and Turner followed in the same path.
Wilson's work is most beautiful in its direct, full
painting, but he is limited in his range ; while
Turner's seems to know no limit, for he touched
the extremes of light and dark, of sunshine and
of gloom. Such pictures as the "Shipwreck,"
the "Sun rising in a Mist," and the "Calais
Pier" show the power which he possessed — ^in
which he is quite unapproachable — of giving the
greatest minuteness of detail without losing the
breadth of the general impression. In his later
work, as in the "Approach to Venice," detail
was suggested rather than expressed, but it was
fully suggested. How delicate, in these pictures
of his later time, are the gradations, and how
slight the intervals between the tints !

Turner's enormous range, his comprehensive-

lOO Lectures on Painting

ness, and the beauty of his vision should be
studied in his drawings as much as in his paintings.
I do not, indeed, know if the drawings do not
to the artist express his qualities best.

The work of Constable touches on smaller things
and the more homely aspects of nature. He sees
things at close quarters ; his range is not so great.
He felt the beauties of everyday nature, of trees
and fields under the sky, and painted them with a
clearness and a freedom from convention which
were then new in art. As you know, when his
pictures were shown in Paris in 1824, th^y were
welcomed as a return from conventionality to
nature, and made the point of departure for what
is now known as the Romantic school, the finest
group of painters that France has produced.
" The Valley Farm " in the National Gallery is, I
think, one of his finest works. How beautifully
his trees are drawn ! I think one of the most
difficult things in painting is to paint a tree. The
most difficult of all, perhaps, is to paint a sky
which shall really be a sky ; but as this means
that all the other elements in the picture shall be
in accord with it, to paint a good sky is to paint a

Landscape and Open-air Painting loi

good picture. It is not so very difl&cult to copy
a tree, but to paint it so as to make it live, to give
us the impression of life that a tree gives us when
we look at it in passing, or without sitting down
to paint it, is a thing that few can do well. How
often, when we set about painting a tree — or any-
thing else, for that matter — ^we lose, even in
looking at it, the charm that attracted us ! We
get confused, I suppose, with the infinity of detail,
and by our intentness on each particular part,
or by analysing each part separately, our minds
are taken away from the general idea of the whole
which made us wish to paint it ; and we end by
getting a painting of the branches and leaves, but
not the living tree. We miss it, somehow. One
often sees trees painted that look all cut out at the
edges, like trees on the stage, and when we look
at the edges of a tree against the sky, we see that
they look cut out, too ; but if we look at the tree
as a whole — as a great green dome, spreading up
and rounding into the sky, with the light shining
on it and through it — if we can realise this, we
can get a little nearer to our tree. Sir Joshua
Reynolds touches on this in his discourses, and

V

I02 Lectures on Painting

advises students to study the general masses and
disposition of their trees, and not to devote them-
selves to painting each particular part.

Constable saw his trees as a whole, and so did
Rousseau, Cecil Lawson, and Corot. Theodore
Rousseau was the greatest French landscape
painter of our time. There are two fine pictures
of his in the Louvre— one, a marsh in the even-
ing, and another of an opening through trees at
sunset (I think there is a version of this in the
Wallace Collection) — ^which are most perfect and
beautiful things ; his work is fine in colour, severe
in drawing, and has a wide range of effect. And
Cecil Lawson, one of our best landscape painters,
was very like Rousseau in his austerity and fine
sentiment, and in his large view of nature.

One of the most delightful of landscape painters
is Corot, whose work has a lightness of touch, and
a kind of happiness in its delicate sentiment,
which are altogether his own. He is another
painter who arrived at ease of execution through
beginning carefully and hardly. There are some
of his early pictures of Rome in the Louvre, very
beautiful, and, at the same time, very hard and

Landscape and Open-air Painting 103

precise ; and I have seen drawings— life studies
— of his, all elaborately worked with the hard
pencil-point. He was able to paint, or to sug-
gest a tree, in the most delicate way. Con-
stable, Rousseau, and Lawson preferred the
sterner and stronger trees — the elm or the oak —
but Corot loved the delicate trees, especially the
willow, and effects of twilight or dawn ; and he
rendered the mystery produced by tiny inter-
lacing leaves, which look sometimes like a mist
against the sky, in a very beautiful way, which
was, I think, his own. But this is only an
incidental beauty of his work, which is remark-
able in its expression of the clearness and fresh
beauty of nature ; although, as compared with
Turner, his range is very limited, and we feel
his mannerisms when comparing him with
Rousseau.

Claude, Poussin, Wilson, Turner, and Corot
all lived and worked in Rome, and I think this
influence shows in their work, in the sense of
what is called style. There is in Italy something

nobler in the natural forms than in our Northern

It

lands, and the air is more serene ; Italy has a

I04 Lectures on Painting

beauty which has made and still keeps it above
all others as the artist's country.

Rousseau, the landscape painter, was asso-
ciated with several other kindred spirits ; and
the greatest of these was his friend and neigh-
bour, Jean Francois Millet, certainly one of the
greatest artists of the last century. Everything
about him and his comrades is so well known,
and so easily accessible, that I need do no more
than touch on his work. He was, I think, the
first, perhaps the only modem, to approach
nature with the simplicity of the early painters.
I mean simplicity of mind rather than of method ;
as compared, for instance, with our Pre-Raphael-
ites, who varied from their contemporaries not
so much in the nature of their subjects, which
were much the same as those in vogue at the
time, as in their method of painting them.
But Millet was not the first painter of peasants.
This was, I think, an artist of whom I have
already spoken, the elder Breughel, quite one of
the early men. There are a number of his pic-
tures in the gallery at Vienna, of rustic scenes,
harvesting, etc., very fine in drawing and colour,

Landscape and Open-air Painting 105

and painted for the sake of their subjects, and
not as accessories, as are the charming groups of
woodmen in the background of Bellini's " Peter
the Martyr " in the National Gallery. Breughel's
work is very little known in this country.

The work of Millet was a new note in modem
art. No other has seen so clearly and shown so
well the beauty and significance of ordinary
occupations, the union of man with nature, and
the dependence of man on nature. The peasant
had been painted by the Dutchmen, but generally
from the point of view of ridicule, and by Mor-
land ; but he was usually represented as drink-
ing,— or resting in some way, — and was not
painted, as Millet painted him, from cradle to
grave, as one may say, in the midst of his daily
work. One remembers, too, an ideal sort of
peasant, painted by men who did not realise
that his labour is hard, constant, and exacting,
and who did not see the beauty of the simple
movements necessitated by it. But Millet was
painting things which he understood and felt
thoroughly ; yet his work, which we recognise
now as being both true and beautiful, appeared

Io6 Lectures on Painting

to his contemporaries as a rather repellent ren-
dering, and it was some years before he was pro-
perly appreciated. He was a great inventor —
greater even as an inventor than as a painter ;
for he was not a facile painter, and painting with
him was not an end in itself, but only a means of
expression. His design was alwa3rs most beauti-
ful, and there is, I suppose, no incident of the
peasant's life that he has not made the subject
either of paintings or drawings ; and always the
chief interest lay in the expression of the action
or sentiment, and the type. Although his colour
was harmonious, and sometimes very beautiful,
these qualities of painting were of lesser import-
ance to him than those of design. When the
point of expression he sought was reached, he
left off, whether his paint was smooth or rough ;
but he always gave as much detail as he wanted,
and in some cases, as in his picture of a " Village
Church *' in the Louvre, it is carried to very great
completeness, with beautiful colour all through.
This is one of his finest works.

If we compare his work with that of Bastien
Lepage, the greatest of those who have been

Landscape and Open-air Painting 107

inspired by him, we find Millet still the master,
though Bastien, as a painter, was incomparably
more able and skilful. Bastien painted the same
kind of subjects, sometimes absolutely the same
subject, as must sometimes happen. Not, like
Millet, letting everything go for the sake of the
expression, but painting for the sake of giving
the true effect of people in the open air, with the
light and actual colour of nature ; at anyrate,
this became the dominant motive, and he has
done this more beautifully than any other. In
some ways his work recalls that of the early
Italian masters, such as Filippino Lippi, in its
clear lighting and definite drawing, and intensity
of expression. Yet its interest loses when com-
pared with the work of Millet ; or rather, a dif-
ferent point of view, one not so vital, is presented
to us. The approach is so near, the study so
close, that the portrait interest dominates and
displaces the interest of the type, which Millet
always preserved. And the necessity of paint-
ing from his model posing leads to Bastien's
avoiding sunlight and effect, and confining him-
self to an even light ; and leads also to the

lo8 Lectures on Painting

qualities of action, and interest of subject, being
sacrificed to truth of resemblance, so that we
have two qualities to set against each other : in
the work of Millet, the presentation of the type
and the action ; in the work of Bastien, the pre-
sentation of the individual and the surroundings.
The sentiment was the same, but in this Millet
was stronger. His qualities lead up to it, and
enforce it, while Bastien's tend to divert our
attention from it.

There is a design of Millet's, one of a series he
drew on the wood for engraving — a mid-day rest
— ^which we may compare with the " Foins " by
Bastien Lepage. No doubt Bastien was inspired
by Millet, and I think we must agree that the
impression of the subject is stronger in Millet ; of
the individual in Bastien Lepage.

There is never, in the work of Millet, any con-
sciousness of the spectator. His people are
always intent on their occupation, not posing to
the painter, not regarding anything outside their
work. In the drawing of " Night," how well the
intentness of the figures is expressed! And'
nothing is forced ; it is all quite natural.

i A-L ^"

Landscape and Open-air Painting 109

I think the points of difference between these
two painters, in spite of a common aim, are most
interesting. They are both great artists ; but
the question is raised whether it is not better
to give, though imperfectly, the leading elements
of a picture, than to allow a lesser interest to
arise and supplant it. It is a question for the
artist which he considers the greater interest in
his work ; that he will necessarily express.

But Bastien Lepage, although he does not, I
think, rank with the pioneer Millet, yet has a
high place among modem artists, not only as
one of the first who realised figures in simple
outdoor lighting, but for the unaffected sincerity
of his work ; and we must remember that Millet
completed his career, while Bastien's was cut
short by death.

Everything in nature is moving — ^not neces-
sarily quickly, but nothing stands still for
us ; this sense of life and movement must be
given in a picture with the measure of detail
which may be necessary, and the result reveals
the artist's mind, showing on which qualities,
and in what degree, his attention was fixed.

no Lectures on Painting

Corot, I think> in one of his letters, says that
when he was a young man, painting from nature,
he used often to wish that the clouds would stand
still, so that he could draw their forms ; but that
he had learnt later that it was a very good thing
they did not, for the thing to express in clouds was
their sense of movement. It must be a matter
for the personal feeling of the artist how he ex-
presses the movement of nature. No rule can
be given, but we recognise it, or its absence, in a
picture. We have a different feeling in looking
at a sunrise from what we have in looking at a
sunset, although at any one moment, if we saw
it only for that moment, we could not tell whether
we were looking at a sunrise or a sunset ; and the
reason is, I think, that our sensations are, in one
case, of a progression from darkness to light, and
in the other from light deepening into dark ; and
some expression of this feeling, although he may
be quite unconscious of the means he uses for the
purpose, will be given by the painter. In the
same way, too, if we are painting figures engaged
in any action, it will not bring to our minds a
clear image of the action, if we only give one

Landscape and Open-air Painting in

momentary phase of it such as a snapshot would
give ; for we have in our minds an impression
produced by successive phases of the action,
and a rendering will suggest itself which, though
probably not true, as a snapshot would be, to
the action at any particular instant, will give
the general sense of it more truly. If more than
one figure is engaged in the same movement, the
whole can be expressed by representing each
figure at a different stage of it. A good example
of this may often be seen when men are breaking
up the streets, where four men will drive a steel
wedge into the hard road with sledge-hammers,
striking in turn on the wedge ; or in a row of
men mowing, or of horses walking. One can, in
such cases, by referring from one figure to the
other, give the complete movement.

But whatever we are able to get direct from
nature, in studying movement, should be revised
afterwards, and considered in reference to the
impression of the movement which we have in
our minds, for what remains in our minds is the
essential thing.

VI
ON REALISM. AND IMPRESSIONISM

VI

ON REALISM AND IMPRESSIONISM

THE greatest work in painting that has been
produced is unquestionably the ceiling of
the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. This
work shows, in perfect balance, all the qualities
of the finest art : invention, impressive senti-
ment, grandeur of design, with a presentation of
form which is not only in itself beautiful and
noble, but unapproachable in its expressiveness
and appropriateness of action and gesture ; and
in colour it is rich, grave, and harmonious. In
this great work each quality stands in such
perfect balance one with the other that no one
asserts its pre-eminence ; and each quality is
carried to its farthest possible point of expres-
sion. It is impossible to say whether this work
is greater in knowledge of form or in the senti-
ment which it inspires — or which inspires it —

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Ii6 Lectures on Painting

in its design or in its colour, in its fulness or its
austerity. The general impression which it pro-
duces is of perfect harmony, and of a mind
infinitely greater in its range than our own.
Michelangelo is beyond, and apart from, other
men. His work has not the sentiment of Pagan
art ; it has not the sentiment of Christian art ;
but is simply human. Millet said of him that
he seemed able, in a single figure, to personify
the good or ill of all humanity.

Never in art has there been shown such a
perfect balance of intellect and emotion, each
carried to its highest point, as we find in Michel-
angelo ; he is the one ideal artist. All is under
the control of his mind. All is kept within the
possibilities of nature., yet taken beyond nature
as it is seen by us.

. It is hardly necessary to dwell on this, for it is
the accepted commonplace of criticism, but I
would like to touch on it, and on the question of
idealism in art, so far as it seems to affect our work.

As you know, Sir Joshua Re3molds, in his Dis-
courses, continually dwells on the excellences of
Michelangelo, and exhorts his students to take

On Realism and Impressionism 117

him as their model. And there is no book that
an artist can read that is so illuminating and
so helpful as the Discourses, though I think it
cannot be so well understood by young painters
as by those who have had some experience, who
know their own mistakes and weaknesses, and
through them can begin to estimate the greatness
of the masters. These admirable Discourses
give, with the utmost candour and clearness,
with entire freedom from the sentimentality and
gush which mars so much that is written on
artistic subjects, the ripe conclusions of a great
artist. We see the perfect workman — the master-
craftsman, if I may say so — ^putting his methods
before us and la3dng bare his mind to us. Now,
if there is one thing in the Discourses more
commented on than another, it is that Reynolds,
while continually exhorting his pupils to follow
the grand style, was himself a follower of the
Venetians and of Vandyke— of the schools which
he classes as merely ornamental, and lower than
the grand style of Michelangelo. And this is
pointed out as an inconsistency. I do not think
that this charge is just or fair. No one can

Il8 Lectures on Painting

read the Discourses without feding convinced of
Reynolds* admirable candour and consistenqr.
No one can read his last discourse, especially the
concluding passage, where he sdiys, '^ I feel a self-
congratulation in knowing myself capable of such
sensations as Michelangelo intended to excite/'
without feeling his absolute sincerity ; and it is
evident that Rejmolds, knowing well how great he
was, and how great was the work of the Venetian
who inspired him, simply and candidly stated
what he felt, in placing his own work, and that
of so many other great artists, below that which
he knew in his heart to be the greatest work of all.
I instance this as touching on idealism in art.
It is evident that Re3molds recognised that more
than the will was necessary to follow in the steps
of Michelangelo— that to take up the work of
Michelangelo one must have the mind of Michel-
angelo— and we can all recall instances in which
his followers have achieved, not sublimity, but
only bombastic pretentiousness — ^not realising
that every peculiarity of his was part of his means
of expression ; and they gave his body, and not
always a good version of his body at that, without

On Realism and Impressionism 119

his spirit. The only artist, so far as I know, who
has been able to enter into and carry on his tradi-
tion worthily is Alfred Stevens, whose Wellington
Memorial and other works stand alone, as con-
tinuing the spirit of the Renaissance.

The tendency to estimate the manner as of
greater account than the mind is the cause, I
think, of so many failures in the direction of
idealism in art. It must be governed by the idea.
If the idea is not worthy, or the artist is not cap-
able of giving it expression, there cannot be a fine
result. Ideal art requires a man to be both a
great artist, as executant, and a great thinker ;
and such men are rare. The majority of us have
to walk, as well as we are able, in much humbler
paths, and to keep within the limits of man's ex-
perience, of things we can actually see ; within the
indefinite bounds of what is known as " realism."

Realism may be of different kinds. One may
have the realism of external things, where a
painter may so copy a face or person that though
everything is represented in a way one cannot
find fault with, it is all lifeless. This would
happen if the painter were only occupied with the

I20 Lectures on Painting

visible surfaces of the person he was painting, and
not thinking of expressing his individual character.
Or one may have the opposite of this ; a realism
of expression or character, in which the character
of the person or thing may be conveyed to the
spectator, although in its appearance — ^in colour
or surface — ^we fail to recognise the painter's
work as corresponding exactly with what he
depicts. We feel that the painter has taken
Uberties with his facts. Or one may try and
maintain a balance between these two extremes,
giving each quality its due place.

The realism of surfaces only is a false realism.
It seems to me to be a kind of evasion of the diffi-
culty of true representation, and to ask that we
should assume that the care with which the trivial
things are rendered, implies that the greater ones
are equally well rendered also. For though we
may have all the buttons right, the ring on the
finger, the curl in the hair, and so on, we do not
produce truth of resemblance by the sum of little
things without first securing the great ones. It
is a common error that much detail necessarily
means completeness, or conscientiousness.

On Realism and Impressionism 121

The realism of expression or character, on the
other hand, may reach the level of very fine art —
perhaps the finest. It depends on the degree in
which; expression or character is realised. It does
not depend on the accuracy with which facts or
details are copied, nor does it depend upon colour,
but upon a grasp of the broad structural fea-
tures and movements which give expression. It
is an analysis and abstraction of the simple
forms.

The realism of externals is a fault too common
in our work to-day. We see too many pictures —
in all branches of painting — ^where the interest
does not lie where it professes to be, or where it
should naturally be looked for, but is frittered
away over the surfaces of things, on rich stuffs,
or flowers, or weeds, or other minor points and
accessories ; while the central intention, or what
should be the central intention, is but little re-
garded. I do not wish to discourage attention to
detail,— detail must and should be attended to, —
but it should come after the qualities of structure
and expression, not before. It is possible, with
detail carried to the extremest point, still to be

122 Lectures on Painting

broad, still to keep to the structure, still to main-
tain the expression, as we may see in the works of
Van Eyck— especially, as masterpieces of model*
ling and character, the two small heads in the
National Gallery— or in the work of Holbein, such
as the ^' Duchess of Milan " ; or, among modem
work, the " Last of England," by Madox Brown,
and the " Ophelia " by Sir John Millais. But
what we should guard against is letting ourselves
be led away, by the comparative ease with which
we can paint the little things, from the difficulties
of painting the greater ones.

The realism of expression or character is to be
found in the work of the past rather than in that
of to-day. We find it in the work of Titian, of
Tintoret, of Rembrandt, as in the "Jew Mer-
chant " in the National Gallery, and of Sir Joshua
Reynolds. It is not an imitation of nature, but
an abstraction of an imaginative artist, and is
found, as a rule, in his later works. We find
examples of the middle course between these
extremes in the work of Velasquez, of Moroni —
such as the " Tailor " and the " Lawyer " — and of
Lorenzo Lotto, in his fine portrait of an ecclesi-

On Realism and Impressionism 123

astic in the National Gallery, and in the work of
Veronese and Franz Hals. This is the direction,
I think, in which realism in portraiture should go.

The degree of realism, or definite realisation
in a picture, should be kept in accord with the
actuality of its subject. For while it is quite
proper, and may be very necessary, to realise
materials and textures in a picture of actual life,
it is manifestly no help, but is a hindrance to the
expression of the subject, when the same degree
of realism is given in an abstract subject or a
mythological story. In such a subject, where
the appeal is to the imagination through figures
or persons whom we know to be unreal, it jars
terribly to find figures, draperies, and accessories
painted with the reaUsm of still life, so that we
recognise the model, or question the material of
the dresses, and wonder where they were bought.
Some convention, some treatment, especially of
the colour, in accord with the sentiment, should,
I think, be adopted in work of this kind.

The hardness and archaism of the early
painters is acceptable to us in these subjects,
as we see in the " Primavera," or the " Venus

124 Lectures on Painting

rising from the Sea," by Botticelli, because it
does not lead us to think of our treatment of
nature. We are too far removed from the early
men, and their style of painting also becomes
legendary, like the story of their pictures. There
is a consequent harmony between subject and
treatment. We may see this in the work of
Bume-Jones. Titian's convention seems to be
too near to nature, Tintoret's is less literal, but
Michelangelo's is the ideal one.

Whatever be the intention in a picture, the
treatment should be in accord with it. This
seems self-evident ; but often we see pictmres
where a greater sense of reality, of unity, would
be gained were a less realistic treatment adopted,
and the picture would be more real if it were not
so realistic. In painting real things, let us be as
real, as true to what we see in nature, as we can.
And the field is wide enough. But when we
attempt subjects outside ordinary experience,
we are under the disadvantage, as compared with
the early painters, of not having the same naive
simplicity of mind which carried them safely
through very difficult themes. We are too self-

On Realism and Impressionism 125

conscious, too critical, and cannot walk securely
outside the bounds of our ordinary experience ;
and we seldom see a Scriptural theme, or an
allegory, treated now in a way that we do not,
in our minds, challenge — ^however much we may
admire its skill— on the ground of its leaning
towards a kind of realism that is inappropriate
and distracting, in the sense that the real
interest of the picture is not where it professes to
be. As, in a picture of history, the historical
interest may be neglected, or overpowered, and
altogether secondary to the interest of the
costumier ; although it may be said that from the
painter's point of view it does not matter, and
that good painting, as good painting alone, will
always hold its own.

This is true ; yet I cannot help feeling that
painting of objects, as an end in itself, is not fully
satisfactory, and that true realism consists in
the impression of general truth produced by
rendering, not only the externals, but, by means
of the externals, something of the significance of
the thing painted. We find this in all the
greatest art, and this should be the painter's

126 Lectures on Painting

aim. He should give his reading of the subject.
He should, at the same time, by study and by
reference to what great artists have done, edu-
cate himself, so that his reading of nature may
not be an ignoble one.

It is impossible to draw the line and say where
realism ends and impressionism begins — ^that is,
if we are not to confine the term ^* impressionism "
to a particular school of explorers in colour. I
do not think we should do so, as all art is so
largely a matter of personal impression ; and
one quality runs into another, from the old con-
ventions at one end of the scale to the extreme
impressionist at the other, whose impression is
so personal that he alone can understand it.
But if we use the term in its accepted sense, as
denoting the work of a number of artists whose
interest is in recording effects of light, seeking to
express nature truly and disregarding old con-
ventions, we have a very interesting develop-
ment of painting to consider.

There has always been impressionism in paint-
ing, but it was in the recording of form and move-
ment, and not of colour. The colour of the older

On Realism and Impressionism 127

painters was more or less arbitrary, except in
the case of a few men. They did not study or
seek to record the momentary effects and changes
of colour with the keenness they showed in
stud3dng form, or light and shade. We know
how they took trouble to give draperies the effect
of movement, or figures the sense of action.
And it was not until landscape painting had
developed — until the time of Turner, and since
then — ^that some artists saw in the study of colour
as effected by light a new field, a little comer of
nature which had not been explored, where some
fresh beauty might be found.

The old painters gained colour at the expense
of light, suggested sunlight by means of dark
shadow, and the general effect of truth to nature
by a proportionate lowering of the scale of colour
in nature. Turner was the first to discard these
methods, and to try and attain in a higher scale
of colour one more resembling nature, the fulness
and gradation of Nature herself ; to get colour in
the shadows as well as in the lights. And in his
finest works he did, I think, succeed in giving
this, not only as it had never been given before,

128 Lectures on Painting

but with a delicacy which has not been equalled
since ; he was the first and the greatest impres-
sionist painter. He left no successor in England,
and it was not until some years after his death
that Claude Monet, and some other French artists
who had been inspired by his work, endeavoured
to develop his principles, or perhaps it would be
more correct to say that they were influenced to
study nature in the direction indicated by Turner
— ^the realisation of actual sunlight ; and their
painting became brighter and brighter in the
ejffort to express its full brilliancy, or to suggest
its effect, until it has now reached the limits of
what is possible in paint.

The impressionists have rendered sunlight with
a truth of colour and freshness new in art —
if anything can really be said to be new ; for
their method of painting in pure colours is
but a kind of magnified stippling, and one re-
members the pictures of Eastern simlight by
J. F. Lewis, in which a wonderful brilliancy
is produced by small touches of pure colour.
One cannot help feeling that some impressionist
work in its extreme developments— where, in

On Realism and Impressionism 129

order to get the full force of colour, the paint is
laid on pure, unmixed, and in separate spots — ^is,
in spite of its beauty, disquieting and violent ; and
that it is questionable if, after all, this method is
as true to nature as the older conventions of
painting, where the effect is more restful if less
brilliant.

It is a fresh convention, that is all. One can-
not say that it is truer than others, for truth is
infinite, and cannot be expressed in any formula ;
it may be truer in a particular respect, but this
applies to the older conventions too. The im-
pressionist methods make evident to us, by the
force of contrast, the beauty of the older conven-
tions, and many painters are returning to them
as being more true to the general look of nature,
so far as it can be expressed by paint ; this may
be taken as a reaction from impressionism, it
being felt to have reached its limit of expression.
But we cannot contentedly go back again to the
old brown shadows and degraded tones ; some-
thing has been gained, and we may try to follow
the effective planning, the breadth and simplicity
of the older painters, and still to have our colours
9

130 Lectures on Painting

clear and true. It seems to me that the work
of Manet was in this direction.

I should like to touch briefly on the art of
Japan, which has influenced Western art in the
last fifty years. It is a true style, perfect and
complete in itself; and there is no art more
beautiful, in the sense of simply giving pleasure
by its decorative qualities. It is frankly im-
pressionist in its disregard of all but the things
chosen, is less diffuse and self-conscious than
our art ; more concentrated, more vital. Its
point of view is altogether different from that
of Western art. This difference is so great that
Japanese and modem European pictures cannot
hang together on the same wall harmoniously ;
the European work suffers. The two schools do
not agree, and one would say that it is impossible
to combine their points of view, were it not for
the work of Whistler and Degas. Whistler, in
the portraits of his mother, of Miss Alexander,
and in his nocturnes, has entered into the spirit
of Japanese art so thoroughly as to gain from it
something of his own, and to develop his own art
from its suggestions ; and the work of Degas shows

On Realism and Impressionism 131

the same influence in the unexpectedness of its ar-
rangement and its decorative balance and spacing.

There is something disquieting in the fact that
Japanese art is so beautiful^ and at the same
time so altogether different from ours, so much
so as to cause a momentary thought whether it
is not finer. But whether or no, we must keep
on our own road, for our traditions and practice
do not lead us to render nature like the Japanese.
Still, we may study their work with great ad-
vantage ; especially their fine colour, and the
way they make their pictures by simple masses
of colour or by silhouette, so that the effect is
produced by the play of colour agamst colour, or
by harmony of colour, and not by light and shade.

Our art appeals through representation or imi-
tation, creating an illusion of nature in its three
dimensions ; while the Japanese representation
of nature is not imitative, but selective, certain
things being chosen and the rest ignored. And
their art seems, in this respect, to have de-
veloped to its final perfection on the lines of the
earliest forms of art, without changing its direc-
tion. If we go back to beginnings; to the

132 Lectures on Painting

Egyptian wall-paintings, to the Greek vase-
paintings, or to the earliest Italians, or even if
we look at the drawings of children, we find they
are alike in this, that they draw the thing they
want to express, and leave "out the rest. The
Japanese make their selection in the same way ;
their art has developed, but has not changed.

But in our art this simple method of selection
is no longer possible; figures must have their
backgrounds and surroundings, and the appear-
ance of nature must be studied in order to give,
by light, shade, or colour, the necessary emphasis
to the principal parts.

We are agreed that this is the proper way to
represent nature, but the art of the Japanese
brings home to us the fact that it is not the only
way; and we see from early pictures, such as
the " Battle of St. Egidio," by Paolo UceUo, in
the National Gallery, which is extremely like a
Japanese picture, that the Early Italian point of
view was very similar to that of the Japanese.
Then I think we can realise how much the ap-
preciation of a work of art depends upon the
accepted convention of the moment ; and this

On Realism and Impressionism 133

may help us to understand the unaccountable
neglect which has from time to time overtaken
great artists.

Our conventions serve the same end as the
simple selection of the Japanese, to give promi-
nence to the thing desired ; but it is not easy to
decide how far we should be absolutely frank
before nature, as we know we ought to be, and
how much to depend on conventions. All that
we can do is to try and understand the reasons
for conventions, we may then be able to use ^m ;
and the imderljnng thing, I think; fs that imita-
tion as an end is not enough — there must l>e
some motive or point in the picture to which it
is ^ecessary to give prominence ; for all art is
based on selection.

The student's greatest difficulty is to find him-
self ; what it is that he really wants to express ;
and he is naturally more influenced by the present
than by the past. His inclination is to think
only of the mode of to-day, of the work which
surroimds him, rather than to search for general
principles. But he should try and arrive at
principles, and to that end study also the work

134 Lectures on Painting

of the old artists, who have travelled the whole
road ; depending on nature for his inspiration,
while referring to them for guidance. For we
train ourselves to see and understand, by study-
ing the work of the masters, which help us to
form our judgment before nature.

I have tried to put before you as fairly and
with as little bias as I can, some of the problems
we have to consider ; but it seems to me, now
that I am come to the end, that I am something
like the innkeeper who had but one wine in his
cellar, which he made do duty for all vintages,
only changing the label on the bottle. Like the
innkeeper, I have given you the only wine I
have, and, after all, the label does not matter ;
nor does it matter, I think, what kind of label
is affixed to our work — ^whether it is realist,
idealist, impressionist, or what not. The im*
portant thing is that we do it as well as we can.

THE END

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